Accessibility options for disabled players

StartledSimian · April 2021

Hi folks,

I've been playing for quite a while now, somewhere in my Collections I even have my delightful little monkey from yester year. I have however found myself at loss recently. About a three weeks ago now I lost the use of my left hand, which, as any PC gamer knows, is not ideal for playing through your library. This is made worse by the realisation that the broad majority of mine is made up of various FPS and adventure type games that require shall we say...dexterity.

Frankly I don't know how long I'll be without ol' lefty, that would be in the hands of the real life healers amongst us, I am however missing ESO, my friends and guildmates. Is there a way to play this game one handed or should I be making peace with perhaps hanging up my robes for good?

I have an older keyboard, none of this new fangled macro RGB wizardry; and a relatively new Mamba mouse.. there's also an old flight stick but I fear that I might not find that as wieldy whilst healing vSS...

Many thanks,
Simian

etchedpixels · April 2021

There are things like foot controlled mice (often called a 'footmouse' or 'rat'). For some games there are also tools that use microcontrollers to automate sequences (so in theory you could put different rotations on start/stop buttons if you've had a stroke and lost some of your hand control, but these seem to be very ad-hoc hackaday type things not products so much). In PVE games that ought to be fine - I can see it being controversial in PVP. Not so sure about gaming but for general computing a footmouse might be worth a look.

I would take medical advice first though - you don't want to make a condition worse bending your body around it in odd ways, and there are plenty of conditions where having a driving desire to get control back will help you get through rehab.

Armethius · April 2021

sorry to hear this but i have heard some of the best even fps shooters players are not those with full motion in their extremeties

Danikat · April 2021

If you can afford to buy new inputs then I'd look into something like an MMO mouse with 12+ buttons on the side, or a keypad (which is like a small keyboard with a thumb stick) which might enable you to play one-handed.

Or a more unusual solution, something like this: https://www.azeron.eu/

The tricky part is finding one that's comfortable for you, since it may not be possible to try them before buying one. But I'm sure it would be possible to find something with enough inputs for a game like ESO. I mainly use the number pad on the keyboard and 5 extra mouse buttons to play, and of course a lot of people use controllers so you certainly don't need a full keyboard.

Armethius wrote: »

sorry to hear this but i have heard some of the best even fps shooters players are not those with full motion in their extremeties

For an extreme example there's a professional gamer team called the Quad Gods who play with their mouths because they're all partially or fully paralyzed from the neck down: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55811621

StartledSimian · April 2021

Thanks for your replies and support so far. I'll take a look at the mice and azeron offerings.

I had a bit of a look at the Naga X earlier but I'm not sure how the movement would work and whether the side buttons would substitute for a WASD configuration?

That link though about the Quad Gods.. absolutely incredible. They really quite inspiring.. sort of puts everything in perspective really.

I've not been handling this as well as perhaps I could be. It's just a shock to the system that you can't really prepare for.

I'll go away and have a look though at these suggestions. The foot rat thing might not be as helpful mind based on my dancing abilities... or distinct lack of coordination on those arcade games!