He has been encouraging people with disabilities to game since 1998. But console controllers used to be designed only for players who could use fingers on both hands to move characters, attack enemies, talk and so on.
Tanaka and his colleagues would modify controllers with accessories to meet the needs and abilities of individual patients. But customizing controllers this way wasn’t easy or cheap.
That changed in 2018 with the debut of the Xbox Adaptive Controller.
“I was astounded,” he said. “We had been begging game companies for years to develop controllers for people with disabilities. Then all of a sudden, the kind of device we’d been wanting for so long was rolled out.”
The Xbox Adaptive Controller has a large panel designed for easy operation by people with disabilities, as well as multiple ports for connection of additional buttons and other accessories. It exemplifies inclusive design principles like “recognize exclusion,” “learn from diversity” and “solve for one, extend to many.”
“If we design for people who have a unique need, it benefits people universally,” explains Bryce Johnson, a senior inclusivity designer on Microsoft’s Xbox team.
The staff and patients at the Hokkaido Medical Center were so impressed by the controller that they made a video about its impact.
“We wanted to show people how Xbox Adaptive Controller can be used to play games from the perspective of people with disabilities,” Tanaka says.
Because of COVID-19, people involved in the use Xbox Adaptive Controller in Tokyo were unable to visit the center to help with the video’s production. Instead, Microsoft Teams was used to connect staff in Hokkaido and Tokyo to develop the story and confirm production details. They wanted the video to be useful to people throughout the world, so production staff also used Microsoft Translator and other tools to create English subtitles.
The video introduces the many features of the Xbox Adaptive Controller and shows how people with limited mobility can use them, particularly by understanding how their bodies move and how those movements can be used to play games.
