[games_access] Games for Health 2008 and Game Accessibility Workshop

[d. michelle hinn]

Hi Barrie and everyone on the GA list!

Yes, a few of us were at the Games for Health conference and are 
submitting our slides online so that they can be linked to the video 
that Ben generously recorded of our whole day's event. So now we have 
a nice collection of videos that we'll be able to put on YouTube or 
whatnot for free so we can point game devs, government agencies, 
funders, etc to these resources to show a little bit of what we do! 
How cool is that? :)

The conference was great, although I sprained my ankle toward the end 
(believe it or not it happen when I was walking barefoot in the rain 
and NOT when I was wearing my infamous way too high heeled shoes. 
Lol. I'm ok -- just have a splint -- no breaks. I think it's a bit 
funny, actually, so if you feel like laughing...please do! I am! :D

So we had an all day workshop where we had talks by old and new 
friends! Lots of very interesting and diverse talks and it was well 
received. I'm writing an article for AbleGamers right now that can be 
co-linked from our blog and anyone else's. I thought that it would be 
good to get an official report up in as many venues as possible and 
with AbleGamers we now can reach so many more consumers than we ever 
have as a SIG. So I'd like to thank Mark and Stephanie from there for 
helping us grow this side of things that we haven't been able to get 
to because we're more industry focused most of the time. AbleGamers 
is not a "SIG" site but both Mark and Steph are memberss of the SIG. 
They have stepped up to the plate to help at GDC when I was not 
feeling well and then Mark delivered an excellent talk as well. So I 
just want to plug them again because as SIG members they have done a 
lot and the community that they run is top notch. I encourage 
everyone who is not already a member of AbleGamers (ablegamers.com) 
to check it out if you haven't had the chance to yet and to join the 
community.

Ah back to Games for Health -- In addition to Mark and myself from 
the SIG, we had Lynn talking about accessible gaming in the 
classroom, Eleanor from 7-128 talking about the ALERT project, 
Giannis talking about "Game Over," Kevin Bierre talking on research 
in the field of GA and how to include accessibility into the 
university gaming curriculum, Mark talking about AbleGamers and the 
gamers with disabilities community, Eric Walker talking about Strange 
Attractors 1 and 2, and Robert demo-ing the QuadController and his 
documentary. We also heard from some folks at AT for kids and Ben 
Heck (the infamous hardware hacker who had some cool stuff (and he 
and Ben Sawyer cooked up a great surprise for the next day -- one 
handed guitar hero (check out ablegamers for more on this -- Mark's 
already posted about this). And, of course, we had Ben Sawyer talking 
about how we fit into the games for health field. I hope that I 
haven't forgotten anyone! There were so many great talks and a LOT of 
diversity of attitudes (in a healthy way) about game accessibility. 
This will be in my article and I'll post the link when it's up on 
AbleGamers!

Anyway, I think we had a great first showing for a full day workshop 
and I know that we are all brimming with ideas about how to make our 
participation bigger and better next year! :)

Michelle

>How did the Games for Health conference go - I remember we were 
>speaking at the same times.
>
>Robert, you'll be pleased to know that a short video clip of yours 
>opened proceedings at the Game Accessibility Workshop in Sussex, 
>Essex - which was very well received all round. I'll post a bit more 
>later. Meanwhile - how did your talk go?
>
>
>Barrie
><http://www.OneSwitch.org.uk>www.OneSwitch.org.uk
>
>
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>games_access mailing list
>games_access at igda.org
>http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
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