Spend enough time with video games and scrolling Video Game Twitter, the chances are good you’ll come across AbleGamers. The charitable organization, which hit its 20th anniversary this year, describes its mission on its website as “combating social isolation through play.” The conceit behind AbleGamers is simple yet profound: they consider video games a tool with which to combat social isolation and engender inclusiveness amongst disabled people. The organization poignantly notes more than half of people with disabilities, or 51%, are “more likely to be socially isolated than their non-disabled peers.” Because of this social isolation, AbleGamers believes video games are a conduit to community, further noting the overarching goal is provide disabled people ample opportunity to have “rich, well-rounded lives that let them be their best selves and to have something to look forward to.”
AbleGamers offers a slew of informational resources on adaptive gaming, and has longstanding partnerships with captains of the video game industry in Twitch, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and more. AbleGamers has a video on their YouTube channel which explains why support matters.
Mark Barlet founded AbleGamers in 2004. An Air Force veteran who became disabled during service and now serves as AbleGamers’ executive director, he explained in a recent interview with me his disability hasn’t altered the way he approaches gaming personally. The catalyst for starting AbleGamers, he said, was his best friend Stephanie. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the disease took away her ability to play video games. It led Barlet on a journey where he tried to find solutions for her, but ultimately found nothing that could help.
“[I began] looking at [accessible gaming] as a calling,” Barlet said. “If disability was affecting the way my family—who stayed connected using video games—was finding gaming to be taken away because of a disability, then it’s probably affecting other people as well.”
Despite finding nothing for Stephanie, Barlet did find Steve Spohn.
Spohn, who’s worked alongside Barlet at AbleGamers for the last two decades and serves as chief operations officer and community outreach director, told me in an interview concurrent to Barlet’s that he’s devoted much of the last many years “fighting and scrapping on the internet with anyone [who said] bad words about people with disabilities or accessibility.” Spohn is disabled, having a condition called spinal muscular atrophy, which he explained is “slowly taking away my ability to use standard controllers” while gaming. To make them more accessible, he plays using a mouse. Spohn shared how he first met Barlet, telling me Barlet wrote an article long ago for the AbleGamers website about how difficult it was to play World of Warcraft one just one hand. At the time, Spohn was transitioning from playing with a keyboard and mouse to only using a mouse because he no longer had the strength to push the keys. Spohn discovered that, with the help of a laser point feature in the game at the time which allowed players to “automatically point in the direction of your teammates and allies,” he could turn the mouse up high—which itself worked via laser—so you could point a certain direction and play one-handed with nothing else. Spohn wrote a letter to Barlet about this, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
When asked about the current state of accessible gaming, Barlet said the last 7 or 8 years has seen an explosion of support for the disability community and video games. An increasing number of development studios, couple with social media’s rise in prominence, has spurred this interest. This confluence of factors, Barlet said, has enabled “individuals with disabilities to advocate for themselves in a way we haven’t seen before” and added technology’s ever-burgeoning capabilities have led gamer makers to “really lean into” creating more accessible and equitable experiences for disabled people. Barlet was quick to acknowledge there indeed are “dark spots” in the gaming industry, but by and large, “we’re seeing more and more efforts being put into not only investing in the education of developers so that they can create those rich experiences, but the games themselves coming out and having some cutting-edge, accessible experiences.” As one example, Barlet cited the popular God of War: Ragnarok title being playable by a Blind person and the time and effort it took to ensure the software was accessible.
“It shows not only how far we’ve come, but if you’re willing to put the work in, you create an experience that leaves no one out,” Barlet said.
For his part, Spohn seconded Barlet’s sentiments, saying it’s “such a strange time” seeing ostensible rivals Microsoft and Sony band together “to try to push the world forward on gaming accessibility.” It’s great to see, he added, because these two behemoths are able to set aside their brand loyalties in Xbox and PlayStation, respectively, to say the disability community likes video games too and we should make them feel included in the gaming space. On the other hand, however, there are lots of people on social media trying to be gatekeepers to the gaming world by ridiculing the adaptations disabled people have made. To that point, Spohn shared an anecdote about a person who was able to defeat bosses in Elden Ring using Morse code, which Spohn found especially near and dear to his heart. One of the people who worked with AbleGamers in their nascent era was Corey Carroll, whom Spohn said could play video games only through a technology akin to Morse code.
“Carroll would have been super proud to see Elden Ring—one of the hardest games—being beaten with such a device and you got Twitter making fun of people for doing that. That’s the kind of world we live in for disability right now,” Spohn said. “It’s weird in that some people are pushing really hard for [inclusivity] and some people are pushing really hard against it. I wish we could all come together and realize that however you push forward and play games is what it’s all about.”
Barlet likened Spohn’s comments to a “tug of war” in the gaming world, saying it’s meaningful that a titan like Activision Blizzard is opening its war chest to educate game developers on accessibility. There’s no gaming equivalent to the Americans with Disabilities Act; Activision Blizzard is under no compulsion to do this advocacy aside from arguably a moral one, Barlet said. Other companies have followed suit.
“We’re seeing new companies that haven’t even released their first game investing in making sure the experience is accessible,” Barlet said. “Then on the flip side, we have studios that aren’t doing much at all. It’s getting better. It’s better than it’s ever been, for sure. But it’s not perfect.”
My conversation with Barlet and Spohn, which incidentally is exclusive to me, coincided with the announcement of an AbleGamers fundraiser that allows people who donate the opportunity to win a variety of “cool prizes.” The fundraiser, which runs through Wednesday, May 10, includes sweepstakes for World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Diablo IV, with the grand prize being a trip to the Los Angeles-based studio of the respective development shop. Activision Blizzard is sponsoring the fundraiser, with Barlet telling me AbleGamers is “really happy” for the opportunity and hopes that fans of the aforementioned games “take this opportunity to be able to have an experience of the lifetime.”
Both Barlet and Spohn doubled down on the gaming industry and disability. Barlet pointed to a “now infamous” video still living on the AbleGamers’ YouTube in which they asked people at the Game Developers Conference if publishers ever thought about inclusivity vis-a-vis accessibility. The answers, he said, were “eye-opening” in that a few people said yes, some said no, and still another laughed and walked out of the room. That ism’t the reality anymore, Barlet said. There isn’t a week that goes by nowadays where Barlet isn’t hearing from a developer or studio about accessibility. He attributes this shift to society becoming evermore empathetic about diversity and inclusion, telling me companies have increasingly realized supporting accessibility isn’t merely morally correct but it shows a high degree of business savviness as well. Barlet reiterated things aren’t perfect and there remains holdouts, but the feedback has been “amazingly positive.”
“I have always found that once you introduce the disability world and what the needs are for people with disabilities to play video games, developers are all-in,” Barlet said. “[They say] ‘Hey, we want everybody to experience these worlds that we pour hundreds of thousands of hours on. We just need to know how to give people a chance to do that.’”
Spohn took a decidedly more pragmatic approach to his assessment. He told me it’s great able-bodied people are into video games, but caveated everyone gets older and likely will need some form of accommodation in the years to come to continue enjoying gaming. Statistically speaking, he added, the prevalence of disability gets “higher and higher.” An able-bodied person may not need accessibility today, but odds are they will tomorrow. More urgently, somebody could fall at home or get injured in a car crash and suddenly become disabled, even temporarily, as a result.
“The reality is accessibility is important for your future self,” Spohn said of why accessibility matters. “When I talk to people, they go, ‘Oh, you know what? Now I get it.’ You might not need [accessibility] now, but you’re gonna be happy we’re doing the work now come tomorrow.”
Looking towards the future, Barlet and Spohn echoed the AbleGamers fundraiser, saying they need support from donations to keep the organization going. They’re thankful for the support given by heavyweights like Activision Blizzard, but the true buoyancy comes from communities choosing to support disabled people and their passions.
“We [at AbleGamers] help as many people as funding allows… my hope is we’ll continue to see communities choosing to support people with disabilities,” Barlet said.