56. buildings aren’t the only things that need accessible design

so it became a problem for gamer gareth garratt when any sort of control customization options were nowhere to be found in his recently purchased copy of dead space 2.  gareth lives with cerebral palsy and can’t control games with his hands.  his solution is operating a mouse or controller with his chin to control characters and vehicles in most games that he plays, which is done through control customization.  a few days ago he posted his issue on the overclockers UK forum as well as the official electronic arts forum, to see if there was a way that dead space 2 could have that kind of customization.  a lot of forum users offered help and and tips as far as third party applications or scripts that would allow remapping where software wouldn’t support it, which got him to the point of “kind of working.”  you can see videos of gareth gaming in his style on the overclockers UK forum.  the most ridiculous part is that there were people posting in that thread that wouldn’t believe that this was a legit question. EA forum admin EA_BGY-11 promised in a post to “send this up the ladder,” and it seems that those a few rungs above have listened.

visceral games and executive producer steve papoutsis told joystiq that a patch for full control customization is coming, and will be formally announced after it has been fully tested.  his full comments:

Dead Space 2 PC Players,
The Dead Space 2 team is aware of the issue that disabled players are having with Dead Space 2 PC. In fact a number of folks on our team are so passionate about getting this fix done that they are currently working hard to allow players to re-map key bindings to the mouse which should help disabled players enjoy the game.

I’d like to say I’m very proud of the people on the Dead Space 2 team for coming in today and jumping on the fix first thing. Working with such a talented and compassionate group of people is incredible and makes me proud to be a part of the Dead Space 2 team, Visceral Games, and Electronic Arts. 

In addition to the key binding fix the patch will include other fixes for PC players. Thank you for taking up the cause for our disabled players and letting us know about this problem. Once the patch is fully tested we will announce a release date.

this is just the latest point of contention in what has been a long campaign.  comedian chuck bittner of AskACapper, the self-proclaimed “can’t stand up comedian,” started a petition in 2009 asking video game developers to include this functionality on behalf of all gamers – disabled and non alike.  according to an interview with digital hippos, he was injured in a car accident in 1995 which left him paralyzed from the chest down with limited use of his arms and hands.  his petition outlined the following requests: