Skip to main content
 
 
 
 
 

Shaking Things Up

A screenshot of Paximadaki, a Kinect game made broadly far more accessible than normal. The image here is of a human shadow against a brick wall, trying to guide falling food into a basket.

Can full-body games become more accessible?

It is quite some time since the entrance of Microsoft's Kinect and its full-body gaming approach in our lives.

During its launch there has been a vivid discourse regarding emerging game accessibility problems that it was about to introduce to gamers. Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays the fuss has settled down.

One cannot say for sure if this is because people lost their interest, or hope (or maybe both). Up to now, there just have been a handful of Kinect games which can be played while seated, and thus are (potentially) accessible to people in wheelchairs that have full control of their upper body. But there is a much wider range of people "with" (e.g., amputees, people with arthritis) or "without" disabilities (e.g., you might as well just be tired) for which Kinect games can be hard, or even impossible to play.

You can read the full fascinating article by Dimitris Grammenos via these links: Shaking Things Up (PDF), and Shaking Things Up (Word).