Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. We help
Speaker 1: people be able to play video games because they matter.
Speaker 1: Gaming isn't just a way to unwind and have fun.
Speaker 1: It's a way to connect with other people, whether through casual,
Speaker 1: cooperative play or more competitive play that requires skill. In practice,
Speaker 1: gaming enthusiasts of all ages agree that there's something special
Speaker 1: about the way playing makes them feel. We plug in
Speaker 1: a gas peddle looking device just like you have in
Speaker 1: your car, to an Xbox controller, and we moved the
Speaker 1: foot rest, pulled the little paddle up to the child's foot.
Speaker 1: He pushes down with a little bit of movement. The
Speaker 1: car comes roaring to life, speeds across the speedway, slams
Speaker 1: into the wall in front of him, and he lights
Speaker 1: up like a Christmas tree, just bubbling and giggling and
Speaker 1: having the best time of his life. There's a natural
Speaker 1: learning curve when it comes to playing video games, learning
Speaker 1: the rules, getting to know the controller, learning the button configuration. However,
Speaker 1: for most of us who gain, we may not consider
Speaker 1: that the ability to pick up a controller, press the
Speaker 1: buttons with our fingers, and even speak into the microphone
Speaker 1: are all barriers to entry. For folks who would love
Speaker 1: to get in on the action. There probably are people
Speaker 1: who have gotten an adaptive controller from Xbox and they
Speaker 1: blew off going to somebody's wedding and doing a toast
Speaker 1: because they would have rather played the latest, you know,
Speaker 1: Super Mario Sonic game. It's estimated that nearly two hundred
Speaker 1: forty million people across the US were gaming at some
Speaker 1: point during the lockdown. At about twenty percent of US
Speaker 1: gamers have a disability. There are more people who would
Speaker 1: have been bored out of their minds have they not
Speaker 1: had the ability to connect with these virtual worlds. Stephenspond
Speaker 1: is a writer, a philosopher, a streamer on Twitch, and
Speaker 1: the chief operations officer of the organization Able Gamers, a
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization that advocates for people with physical and mental
Speaker 1: disabilities in the gaming world. They provide peer counseling and
Speaker 1: adaptive technology that helps people play the games they love.
Speaker 1: The clod stick is a great adaptation that you can
Speaker 1: play an entire Xbox with just your mouth. You don't
Speaker 1: need your hands, you don't need your feet, You can
Speaker 1: just use your jaw to move the controller around. And
Speaker 1: there are people out there that could absolutely beat you
Speaker 1: and me up in Street Fighter or anything like that,
Speaker 1: even though we're using another controller. One positive thing that's
Speaker 1: come out of the pandemic is that now more people
Speaker 1: understand what it's like to be trapped at home, which
Speaker 1: is something that able gamers and people with disabilities have
Speaker 1: been trying to explain for years. For someone who lives
Speaker 1: their life with a profound disability, if you spend the
Speaker 1: majority of your time in a bed, in a hospital bed,
Speaker 1: in a room where you don't leave, that becomes an
Speaker 1: isolated place and you start dealing with social isolation in
Speaker 1: a way that before the pandemic most people couldn't really grasp.
Speaker 1: Social isolation is a solvable problem for people with disabilities
Speaker 1: through video games. My mom found and Natari I grew
Speaker 1: up really really poor. My mom took what money she
Speaker 1: had bought me a used atari from one of those
Speaker 1: used electronics stores, and we ended up playing like Burger
Speaker 1: Masher or something where you like, I had to put
Speaker 1: a burger together. It was like little ladders and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think you're talking about Burger type. I can barely
Speaker 1: remember it now, but it was. It was an adorable
Speaker 1: piece of machinery. I think at the time Nintendo was
Speaker 1: already out, but we couldn't afford one of those, so
Speaker 1: she was just really thrilled that I was able to
Speaker 1: operate the controller at all. The earliest one I played
Speaker 1: was Super Mario one and Duck Hunt of course, and
Speaker 1: then I had Super Mario three, but I never got
Speaker 1: Super Mario two, which always which always bothered me. Did
Speaker 1: you play Super are you too? I played all of those,
Speaker 1: although we have to touch on the fact that we
Speaker 1: shot ducks, but there was this annoying dog that kept
Speaker 1: puffing up in the middle of your screen, and you'd
Speaker 1: be like, my dad will get angry and be like,
Speaker 1: why right next to the TV try to shoot the dog,
Speaker 1: which and to be clear, y'all, no dogs were harmed
Speaker 1: in the making of Duck Hunts the video game, not
Speaker 1: that I know of, but yeah, it did not let you.
Speaker 1: So you were diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about how it impacted you
Speaker 1: in gaming? So spinal muscular atrophy is sister disease to ALS.
Speaker 1: So if you saw Stephen Hawkins or have you've known
Speaker 1: anybody who's afflicted with ALS, then you kind of have
Speaker 1: an idea what I'm going through in my life. So essentially,
Speaker 1: my muscles are getting weaker and weaker as time goes on,
Speaker 1: where ALS is much quicker in its development. SMA can
Speaker 1: last for your entire lifetime, so you could live an
Speaker 1: entire set the eighty ninety years and it might never
Speaker 1: take your life, or you might only live for a
Speaker 1: couple of months past birth. When I was born, I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to crawl like a child is supposed to.
Speaker 1: At X amount of milestones. My mom started noticing that
Speaker 1: I was using my arms to pull myself around, that
Speaker 1: my lower legs weren't pushing like they should have been.
Speaker 1: My diagnosis is terminal. I will probably not make it
Speaker 1: to die of old age. But I'm forty now and
Speaker 1: they've been telling me that I probably had a couple
Speaker 1: of years left for about twenty some years now. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm doing that too bad. On that
Speaker 1: you might not want to take out any vegas bets
Speaker 1: on when I'm going to leave this big blue marble.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about the online presence of video
Speaker 1: games and how that's created new worlds. How do you
Speaker 1: think that this successibility has been creating new connections for
Speaker 1: disabled folks? For someone who lives their life with a
Speaker 1: profound disability, if you spend the majority of your time
Speaker 1: in bed, in a hospital, little bit in a room
Speaker 1: where you don't leave, that becomes an isolated place and
Speaker 1: you start dealing with social isolation in a way that
Speaker 1: before the pandemic most people couldn't really grasp. So the
Speaker 1: one thing that has come out of the pandemic that
Speaker 1: was a positive for what able gamers does and what
Speaker 1: people with disabilities have been trying to tell people, is
Speaker 1: that now people understand what it's like to be trapped
Speaker 1: in your house, to not be able to leave, to
Speaker 1: have to stay in one place. Now, maybe you probably
Speaker 1: during the pandemic didn't stay in one room and never
Speaker 1: leave the couch. Although that is some people's dream, it's
Speaker 1: not so great. Let me tell you. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a place where do you now understand that being cut
Speaker 1: off from your friends and your family was horrifying. It
Speaker 1: was not fun in any way. People literally continually complained
Speaker 1: about how lonely they were, and that is an epidemic
Speaker 1: that we largely ignore. It's not about the games. The
Speaker 1: games actually don't matter. Games are fun, games are very
Speaker 1: very cool, but it's the connection to other humans that
Speaker 1: we were really seeking. We're looking for a form of independence,
Speaker 1: We're looking for a form of being able to reach
Speaker 1: out and connect to our loved ones in a way
Speaker 1: that we can facilitate a great experience and those shared experiences.
Speaker 1: That's what this is really all about. That's what able
Speaker 1: gamers is about. That's what being an advocate for people
Speaker 1: with disabilities is all about. Building experiences. When did you
Speaker 1: start making the connection that you were, like, really into
Speaker 1: video games and that this was something you wanted to
Speaker 1: play more of, even though playing them might be difficult.
Speaker 1: You know, it never crossed my mind that playing them
Speaker 1: would be difficult, because everything in my life is difficult.
Speaker 1: Getting up in the morning is difficult. You know. I
Speaker 1: always love the joke that I am just like you, Ronald.
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning and put my pants
Speaker 1: on with a team of people, So you know, it's,
Speaker 1: you know, no different. And you know, that's really where
Speaker 1: it was for me with video games, where I just
Speaker 1: wanted to play them. However it was that I had
Speaker 1: to do that, whether that was with standard controller or
Speaker 1: whether that was with some help. It was one of
Speaker 1: those situations whereas video games become more accessible, they become
Speaker 1: less accessible. So originally we have the you know, super
Speaker 1: Nintendo controller, the Nintendo controller with two or three buttons,
Speaker 1: and you can lay them down on a table and
Speaker 1: I would play it like somebody with a piano just
Speaker 1: right in front of me, with you know, using my
Speaker 1: fingertips to move to manipulate the paddles. And then the
Speaker 1: same thing with Sega. But then you started having buttons
Speaker 1: behind the controller and under the controller, and God help
Speaker 1: you if you tried to play the Nintendo sixty four
Speaker 1: where you needed an alien arm to be able to
Speaker 1: hold it, yeah, the middle. Nobody knows why that was there, nobody.
Speaker 1: So they started coming able, these drastically different controllers, and
Speaker 1: they were hard, they were hard to use. They didn't
Speaker 1: go on a table. You had to hold them in
Speaker 1: your hands or your lap, and so it became more
Speaker 1: and more difficult to play consoles. And fortunately for me,
Speaker 1: that's when the PC gaming really started taking off. And
Speaker 1: I was actually going to school to be an assistant
Speaker 1: engineer an AutoCAD class, and one of my buddies there
Speaker 1: was working at an electronic store, so he was able
Speaker 1: to get a hold of like used parts and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So we callbled together an older used PC
Speaker 1: and I was able to get into online games, and
Speaker 1: that that was sort of the beginning for me. Was
Speaker 1: he started talking about this this universe where you know,
Speaker 1: he was in class, but there was this guild that
Speaker 1: he was running and they were busy farming materials and
Speaker 1: working on you know, this this apparatus and this world
Speaker 1: of Ultima Online was constantly running. And Ultima is a
Speaker 1: massive multiplayer online role playing game. Otherwise noticed that MMOARPG.
Speaker 1: People love these games. They can just go on and
Speaker 1: on and there's expansions and new people to meet, new
Speaker 1: things to play all the time. But you just live
Speaker 1: in this online world. And it was so fascinating to
Speaker 1: me that a digital virtual existence could be out there
Speaker 1: existing at the same time as real life, and you
Speaker 1: could be earning money or working or doing whatever you
Speaker 1: wanted to in this virtual world. And so I really
Speaker 1: kind of got to the point where I just threw
Speaker 1: myself into it and realized that well, if my physical
Speaker 1: body wasn't going to keep up with my mind, then
Speaker 1: maybe my virtual self could. So in terms of what
Speaker 1: you're doing at able gamers, how do you actually improve
Speaker 1: accessibility between video games and a disabled community. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Able Gamers does accessibility in a lot of ways. One
Speaker 1: of our pillars, as we call them, of our organization
Speaker 1: is engineering where we literally create controllers, sometimes from scratch
Speaker 1: at a three D printing, out of household objects, out
Speaker 1: of controllers that already exist that need modified slightly, and
Speaker 1: give them for free through our peer counseling, which is
Speaker 1: another pillar, to people who have difficulty playing games with
Speaker 1: a standard controller. So it's not a a matter of able Gamers,
Speaker 1: you know, being a fast food restaurant where a person
Speaker 1: with disabilities can pull up and be like, yes, I
Speaker 1: will take a number five with the fault, it's like no.
Speaker 1: You go into you know, an actual area and we
Speaker 1: consult with you for up to eight to sixteen hours,
Speaker 1: and we look into your life. What are your challenges,
Speaker 1: what are your desires? How can we use technology the
Speaker 1: bridge the gap between the two and fulfill your life
Speaker 1: by introducing YouTube and environment where people can hang out
Speaker 1: with you virtually and you can be with friends and
Speaker 1: family just like you want to be using these specially
Speaker 1: made controllers. For example, of the quad stick is a
Speaker 1: great adaptation that you can play an entire Xbox with
Speaker 1: just your mouth. You don't need your hands, you don't
Speaker 1: need your feat You can just use your jaw to
Speaker 1: move the controller around. And there are people out there
Speaker 1: that could absolutely beat you and me up in Street
Speaker 1: Fighter or anything like that. They work great, They're just
Speaker 1: massively up there on the learning curve. You have to
Speaker 1: really really want to play games with just your mouth.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like you guys do a lot on
Speaker 1: the back end of adapting video games after market, after
Speaker 1: things already made to allow disabled folks to play. What
Speaker 1: type of advocacy are you doing to get video game
Speaker 1: companies to make their hardware software more accessible. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that there is not a day that goes
Speaker 1: by that someone in the organization is not contacted by
Speaker 1: a Triple A developer asking how they develop a new
Speaker 1: X title for X system in a more accessible way.
Speaker 1: We have so many people now that reach out to
Speaker 1: us because the industry has woken up and they've realized
Speaker 1: that disabled people are a viable market. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to change your entire video games to support
Speaker 1: people with disabilities. You just have to allow options that
Speaker 1: allow people to play the game that you would design.
Speaker 1: We've been doing this for sixteen years now. The first
Speaker 1: ten years was just convincing the industry that people of
Speaker 1: disabilities were out there, they wanted to play games, they
Speaker 1: wanted to continue to be Are these worlds, these wonderful
Speaker 1: virtual worlds that we all love? Right in the last
Speaker 1: four or five years is where you've seen enable gamers pivot.
Speaker 1: And now instead of convincing people that they should care,
Speaker 1: we're convincing them that these kind of things are worth
Speaker 1: putting a few dollars behind. Whether that's a person donating
Speaker 1: to the organization to be able to fund the controllers
Speaker 1: that need to be given out, or it's from a
Speaker 1: major place that has developers that are developing games. And
Speaker 1: so we developed an entire course at Accessible dot Games.
Speaker 1: Accessible dot Games is where you can go see right
Speaker 1: now our program called Accessible Player Experiences, and it's all
Speaker 1: about input patterns, it's all about development where you can
Speaker 1: go and you can look and say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: if you only have the ability to have one functioning arm,
Speaker 1: what are some of the things that would be pertinent
Speaker 1: to that particurely disability? What are some of the things
Speaker 1: that like undo redo, Like what should I design in
Speaker 1: my game so that if someone you know has a
Speaker 1: cognitive disability, or they have a tremor where they click
Speaker 1: the wrong button. What's the way that I can make
Speaker 1: that easier for them? Oh, I just allow them to
Speaker 1: undo what they just did and do it again. Easy done.
Speaker 1: And so instead of trying to look at this as
Speaker 1: a checklist of items like you must have closed capturing,
Speaker 1: you must have the ability to push the A button
Speaker 1: twice like, it's not up to us. We're not here
Speaker 1: to tell you how to develop a game. Are All
Speaker 1: we're here to do is change your mindset to be
Speaker 1: accessible so that you can start looking at development in
Speaker 1: a way that you understand that people aren't necessarily going
Speaker 1: to play the way that we often thought they did.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're going to use special controllers, maybe they're going
Speaker 1: to have limited staminam, maybe they have pain levels they
Speaker 1: have to deal with. There are more people out there
Speaker 1: that you need to be thinking about when you develop,
Speaker 1: rather than just your average joe able bodied person. So
Speaker 1: people with disabilities are already isolated from the physical world.
Speaker 1: Do you think that connecting them with video games runs
Speaker 1: the risk of further isolating them. That's a great question, right,
Speaker 1: So if you have a situation, did your life where
Speaker 1: you're going to be stuck inside and you're going to
Speaker 1: be watching TV. If you're not playing a video game
Speaker 1: with friends, then why wouldn't I want to give you
Speaker 1: the avenue to have the social interaction the way that
Speaker 1: you wish it to be. You know, are there people
Speaker 1: out there who don't follow the everything in moderation rule
Speaker 1: of life? Probably? There probably are people who have gotten
Speaker 1: an adaptive controller from Xbox and they blew off going
Speaker 1: to somebody's wedding and doing a toast because they would
Speaker 1: have rather played the latest, you know, Super Mario Sonic game.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you whether or not that's happened. What
Speaker 1: I can tell you is that there are more people
Speaker 1: who would have been bored out of their minds had
Speaker 1: they not had the ability to connect with these virtual
Speaker 1: worlds than people who misuse the technology and have gotten
Speaker 1: addicted to, you know, shooting pinball with their friends. What's
Speaker 1: what's your favorite game that you're playing right now? My
Speaker 1: favorite game right now is probably Rocket League. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: really good. Yes? Yes, okay, you are you on a
Speaker 1: PS four? I am on I'm on PC. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we'll have to Yeah, we have to exchange my game
Speaker 1: attack is, Oh, it's big ron, so you have to
Speaker 1: exchange gamer. But I I'm rusty, I haven't played in
Speaker 1: a while, and I started playing Fortnite, uh and during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. And but Mike, I mean, there's something there's
Speaker 1: something humiliating about being devastated by like an eleven year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you were killed by a bunny rabbit who was
Speaker 1: surfing on a rocket who was doing cheering, chirping noises
Speaker 1: that managed to home in on you from a thousand
Speaker 1: feet away. There, you can't be mad about that. Likes
Speaker 1: it's not serious, and you know, that's what I really
Speaker 1: like about those kind of games. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: a competitive nature. And sure, you know, I'm proud of
Speaker 1: the fact that I only play with a mouse and
Speaker 1: a tracker on my head. I don't use a keyboard,
Speaker 1: I don't use the controller, and I'm you know, freaking
Speaker 1: diamond in Rocket League. So I'm proud that I was
Speaker 1: going to ask because I'm like silver three. I want
Speaker 1: to say, so we're so you're obt of the game
Speaker 1: is just like soccer. You're just trying to score the
Speaker 1: ball into the other team's goal and there's a hierarchy system, Steve,
Speaker 1: you want to explain the hierarchy system. Yeah, so the hierarchy.
Speaker 1: The way the game works is like every video game
Speaker 1: has a ranking system where you start at bronze and
Speaker 1: then you progress to silver and then gold and Platinum
Speaker 1: and then Diamond and then Champion, and what the ranks
Speaker 1: are changes based on the game, but it's always the
Speaker 1: same five rank system, which basically allows the game to
Speaker 1: put you up against people a similar skill level so
Speaker 1: that people who are lower skill level don't get destroyed
Speaker 1: by the higher skill levels and feel bad about themselves,
Speaker 1: and then the people at the top don't get bored
Speaker 1: because they don't have a competition exactly. You know what's
Speaker 1: funny is, as I spent so many years getting destroyed
Speaker 1: in every other game online saying, you know what, I
Speaker 1: still want to play online anymore until Rocket League comes along.
Speaker 1: It's like, come on, Ronald, You'll play with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people who are all as terrible as you are,
Speaker 1: and you'll have fun. It'll be really competitive because you'll
Speaker 1: all like you'll all like you'll all be terrible in
Speaker 1: the same way together while like learning the game. Absolutely, Steve, clearly,
Speaker 1: I love video games. You love video games, and I'm
Speaker 1: guessing a lot of our listeners do too. What are
Speaker 1: some things they could do to help make gaming more
Speaker 1: accessible for everyone? Of course, I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: that we need donations. You can go to able gamers
Speaker 1: dot org. You can check us out on any of
Speaker 1: the social media's able gamers. So if you have a dollar,
Speaker 1: five dollars, twenty thousand dollars, it doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: have that kind of cash to give out that it helps.
Speaker 1: So the average controller is three hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 1: to make the average session for someone to sit with
Speaker 1: us and be fully funded to go through peer counseling
Speaker 1: is about eight hundred and fifty dollars that goes through
Speaker 1: you know, up much higher if someone has a profound disability,
Speaker 1: that takes you know, more time getting to know them
Speaker 1: and their situation and how to help them on a
Speaker 1: very personal level. But you know, that's that's where essentially
Speaker 1: your donations go. So if you have the ability to,
Speaker 1: we always say please consider a donation. If you are
Speaker 1: not in a place where financially that makes sense, you
Speaker 1: can always just talk about able gamers and people with disabilities.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds extremely generic. Here's the thing about that
Speaker 1: game companies only care about what is being talked about.
Speaker 1: So if people aren't talking about how accessibility options are important,
Speaker 1: about how they want to support people with disabilities, about
Speaker 1: how people with disabilities matter in games, and they want
Speaker 1: to see that representation for people that don't look like them,
Speaker 1: then the support goes away. The only reason that companies
Speaker 1: support initiatives for people that are not quote unquote in
Speaker 1: the mainstream audience is by them figuring out that, oh,
Speaker 1: they are in the mainstream audience and they do matter,
Speaker 1: and we can make money off of them. And that's
Speaker 1: how we get that done. Is about you going out
Speaker 1: to Twitter, you going out to Instagram talking about this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, tweeting at your favorite companies, facebooking. You know,
Speaker 1: that's how you can support able game was the best.
Speaker 1: And if you're a developer out there listening, go to
Speaker 1: Accessible dot Games. It's a free thing. You can go
Speaker 1: check out all the material for free. Right now. There
Speaker 1: is a certified course that you can take for a
Speaker 1: couple hundred dollars to be certified to be able to
Speaker 1: be an accessible developer. But if that's not within the
Speaker 1: budget of your studio. You can always look at the
Speaker 1: material for free online and check it out and incorporate
Speaker 1: that into your next game. Are there any movies or
Speaker 1: books to learn more about accessibility generally? There is a
Speaker 1: great documentary called crypt Camp. It's on Netflix right now,
Speaker 1: you can check it out. It goes through the entirety
Speaker 1: of like what it's like to be a disabled person
Speaker 1: and what it is that people maybe not seeing in
Speaker 1: their everyday lives the people disabilities have to go through.
Speaker 1: There's also a great movie that was released years ago.
Speaker 1: It was all about the ada the creation of it,
Speaker 1: called The Sound of Thought, and it's really about how
Speaker 1: these two guys, one who was disabled, one who was not,
Speaker 1: wanted the ability to go out into public without being
Speaker 1: harassed for being disabled, and how businesses really weren't taking
Speaker 1: the disability community seriously. It's very heartwrenching to me to
Speaker 1: remember and to remind people that if you are thirty
Speaker 1: five years old or older within your lifetime, it was
Speaker 1: legal to discriminate against people at disabilities. If I had
Speaker 1: gone into a McDonald's when I was one years old,
Speaker 1: they could have kicked me out for using a wheelchair
Speaker 1: because I was quote upsetting the other guests, and that's
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people tend to forget because
Speaker 1: we have very short memories when it comes to things
Speaker 1: like this. So remember that. You know, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: long ago that we said that no disabled people are important,
Speaker 1: and you know, having those rights was important for that
Speaker 1: community and it still is today. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being with us today, Steve. Thank you. Steven Spond
Speaker 1: is the chief Operations officer of Abel Gamers Solvable. Senior
Speaker 1: producer is Jocelyn Frank, Research by David Jah, booking by
Speaker 1: Lisa Dunn. Our managing producer is Sasha Matthias, and our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Solvable is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 1: and review. It helps us find our way to the
Speaker 1: ears of new listeners. You can find Pushkin Podcasts wherever
Speaker 1: you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Ronald Young Jr. Thanks for listening.