Modern electronics are capable of incredible things. Even the simplest gadgets now have clocks, gyroscopes, radios, GPS, touch screens, literally anything you can imagine, built right in. Sometimes though, the devices that are capable of doing several things don’t do all of them particularly well. Touch screens are often bolted onto things that really don’t benefit from them, or even worse, detract from the experience. Anyone who has accidentally grazed the touch panel on an Apple TV remote while grasping for it in the dark knows exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes I just want to have a remote with a few simple buttons I can press to make things happen, and that’s it!
Most of the lights in my apartment are WiFi-connected, and offer MQTT capability. I took advantage of this and set up a local MQTT broker (https://mosquitto.org/) on a Raspberry Pi 4 wired to an old Apple Airport router/hub I had lying around (my internet provider makes me use their router for my internet). Now, it’s easier than ever to control my lights…from a browser. Or some phone interface. Or an app. Wait a second…each of those still requires multiple steps just to get me to the point where I can actually control anything. And I probably still have to use a touch screen. Leading me back to my original point, and thus the motivation for the imaginatively named:
WiFi Matrix Keypad Remote
Read more at Guide: Build a WiFi Matrix Keypad Remote
Adafruit Playground is a wonderful place to share what you find interesting. Have a cool project you are working on? Have a bit of code that you think others will find useful? Want to show off your electronics workbench? You have come to the right place.
Adafruit Playground is a safe place to share with the wonderful Adafruit community of makers and doers. Click here to learn more about Adafruit Playground and how to get started.
Whether you’re trying to meet your book goal before the end of the year or looking for an in-flight distraction, the New York Public Library dropped their best books of the year list. Happy reading!
The New York Public Library is proud to present our Best Books of 2023. Our annual recommendations for kids, teens, and adults, curated by our expert librarians, encompass fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, poetry, kids’ books in Spanish, and much more.
The trajectory of space travel has known its fair share of competition. From the early Space Race to modern Tech Billionaires, folks have been racing up. But space is for everyone and as Spacelab payload specialist, Ulf Merbold, stated: “Science in itself is international.”
Spacelab was a first of a kind, an international effort to bring experiments to space with a reusable lab.
Via NASA:
Forty years ago, in 1983, the Space Shuttle Columbia flew its first international spaceflight, STS-9. The mission included—for the first time—the European Space Agency’s Spacelab pressurized module and featured more than 70 experiments from American, Canadian, European, and Japanese scientists. Europeans were particularly proud of this “remarkable step” because “NASA, the most famous space agency on the globe,” included the laboratory on an early Shuttle mission. NASA was equally thrilled with the Spacelab and called the effort “history’s largest and most comprehensive multinational space project.” The Spacelab became a unifying force for all the participating nations, scientists, and astronauts.
The end of the year always comes with a little bit of down time. Maybe you’re in the mood for something new to read? The Washington Post shared some of their 2023 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels favorites.
People sometimes say science fiction basks in optimism for a better future, while fantasy is about nostalgia for an imaginary past. But this year’s most notable fantasy books worked to uncover historical crimes, while science fiction warned of coming evils.
The good news? The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023 will give you hope and strength in the toughest times.
A pair of Dutch wooden clogs are called Klompen, almost an onomatopoeia. While the clogs are iconic to the Netherlands there isn’t much modern demand. Business Insider takes you along with one of the few craftspeople still making Klompen by hand.
There are only 10 clog makers left in the Netherlands hand-carving wooden shoes. And there are even fewer clog painters. The craftspeople who are left are near retirement. To keep their crafts and businesses alive, they’ve gotten creative. At one of the oldest clog studios still standing, Martin Dijkman recreates Dutch masterpieces out of thousands of mini clogs.
Tis the season! This Santa Eye can change your holiday photos from classic to cyberpunk.
Create your own “mad-eyed” Cybernetic Santa Claus eye patch! The eye code with robot/terminator style eye animation runs on the Adafruit TFT Gizmo and Circuit Playground Bluefruit or Express.
Some simple crafting with EVA foam sheets make for a stylish, comfortable eye holder.
Check out the guide and featured products.
The YouTube Channel System of Levers is slowly rolling out a series on GameBoy Graphics. This most recent vido is on the window layer. Its a clear easy to understand video with demonstrations. You can checkout all parts here
Part 4 of a series explaining the basics of GameBoy graphics. This video covers the window layer.
Shoppe Black is a multimedia platform that aims to support Black founders and investors. Check out their SHOPPE BLACK Holiday Gift Guide 2023
We’re excited to present the SHOPPE BLACK Holiday Gift Guide 2023, featuring a curated selection of gifts from Black-owned businesses across a variety of categories.
A curated list for Brooklyn businesses from from Shoppe Black
Rising rents and leases are forcing businesses to close. However, there are still many Black owned businesses and institutions that have weathered the storm and continue to provide great goods and services.
Check them all out! you can also peruse Shoppe Black for other lists for Black-owned busnesses.
If you are out there shopping today make sure you shop Black-owned businesses for #BuyBlackFriday. Google actually has some pretty useful tools this year to help support #BlackOwnedFriday. You can check out the page here!
We’ll be sharing throughout the day too with more resources and links to Black-owned business.
Here at Adafruit, we’re kicking off the holiday season with a Festive Friday Sale that goes all weekend long.
Use code FFS15 at checkout to receive 15% off all items in stock. Some restrictions apply, discount does not apply to gift certificates, some Raspberry Pi boards, subscriptions (this includes AdaBox) and software. We also do not permit the use of discount codes on purchase orders.
The code is valid from Friday, November 24th – Monday, November 27th at 11:59 PM EST. We cannot cancel previous orders or add the discount once your order is placed so please remember to use the code!
We all love popping bubbles, but that sort of fun is short-lived. Who hasn’t gone from a bunch of bubbles to pop to landfill. Maker CMoz has another way: transform bubble wrap into LED fabric! Here’s more from Instructables:
Other than popping the bubbles, which is always fun, I try to save bubble wrap when I get it in packages and reuse it to send on packages. There is still always a pile of it left (is it growing?!). With this Instructable you’ll see how we can repurpose bubble wrap and make it into a fabricthat we can use to make other things!
…Also, because I’m a self-confessed geek, I’ve had to add bling to it – so I’ve embedded a string of RGB color LEDs (NeoPixels) inside the bubble wrap – this is our bling factor!
By reflecting landscapes onto the ground this Artist creates new impressions. Setting up precisely where Monet and Van Gogh stood, a “light tent” shines the subject of a masterpiece onto the ground. The resulting image is a mix of the true refection with the gravelly substrate [ground].
Via Design Milk:
Abelardo Morell’s images are not double-exposures. What you’re seeing is all happening within a single click of the camera without the use of a mechanical projector. His works are based on the principles of a camera obscura, in which light filters through a pinhole to “project” an image within a darkened room, much the way our own eyes work. But in Morell’s tent-camera photographs, he sets up a light-blocking tent at a specific location with a periscope at the top. The image of the real landscape outside bounces through periscope and is redirected to the ground within the dark tent, overlaying the view from outside over the spot from which it is seen – all in real time. To capture the final image, a digital camera is mounted inside the tent, controlled remotely via a computer by Morell. A great video of that process is at the end of this article.
Abelardo Morell: New Ground – In the Terrain of Van Gogh and Monet is on Display through December 9 at the Edwynn Hook Gallery
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
HackSpace Magazine Issue 72 shows the Pico W Air:
Free software and open hardware have enabled a boom in citizen science. This is just the latest device to add to our knowledge of the world around us.
This board comes with a Raspberry Pi Pico W, and adds a Qwiic connector for I2C devices, breaks out a few GPIO pins for 3.3 V, ADC, GND, and four more pins. Most usefully though, is the built-in MQTT client and built-in HTML server, so it can easily transmit the environmental data coming in. It comes with a connection for a PMS5003 particulate matter sensor, which you’ll have to buy separately, along with a power source. Other than that, it’s a one-stop device.
The project can be found at https://hsmag.cc/PicoAirQualityBoard
The board ships with CircuitPython firmware baked into the board. All you have to do is connect to a computer and edit the settings.toml file with WiFi credentials and edit any other settings you might want to change. Comprehensive documentation in the Github repository and beginner-friendly code documentation. The Air is available on Tindie.
Read more, download PDF, subscribe.
[featured_product spid=”5526″]
Engadget shares all the details on the new Ableton Live 12. This version includes a macro oscillator synth and has the ability to create MIDI arrangements or transform existing ones via new tools in Live’s Clip view.
The newest instrument to join the Ableton Live family is going to be a lot of fun. At first glance, the two oscillator setup seems pretty straightforward. But this “macro oscillator” synth has a lot of interesting waveforms to play with. Everything from classic sine/saw/square shapes through to more noise type formations like “rain” and “bubble” mean Meld can really create some unique textures. If you’re a fan of moog-style big pulsing sounds, the “swarm” waveforms are for you. Both oscillators have a modulation matrix that makes it super easy to bend and shape the sound to your liking. From some quick experimentation, Meld looks perfect for sound design and creating big, gritty leads as well as abstract pads and real-word sounding textures.
Leah Bolden has done some eye-opening videos in the past about tools and common tool functions that you may not know about.
I ended up knowing most of the hidden tools within tools in this video. The ones that were new to me were the 90- and 45-degree marking angles built into handsaws and the tool inside of a retractable box cutter knife for snapping off the blades. Of course, this only applies to some saws and some utility knives. My saws nor my knives include these features.
Millennials are old. The generation often cited as bridging a technological gap of pre/post internet ubiquity is pushing 40+. The following generations have had access to “screens” on a level seemingly no one could have predicted. Certainly more access than childhood researchers could keep up with.
A constant fear in parenting circles is how screen time affects children’s brains. It turns out it might not be all bad.
From Fast Company:
One study found that media use improves focusing and learning abilities in the frontal lobe of the brain and that playing video games can potentially increase cognitive demand, improving a child’s executive functions and cognitive skills.
However, screen time was tied in other studies to lower functionality in areas of the brain dealing with language and cognitive control, potentially negatively impacting a child’s cognitive development. Tablet users were also found to have more trouble with problem-solving tasks.
Things did not go to plan for NASA’s SuperBIT [Super Pressure Ballon Imaging Teslescope]. Communications and a rough landing could have spelled disaster if it weren’t for some trusty Raspberry Pis!!
Shortly after launch the Starlink connection went down and the US TDRSS [Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System] was unstable. During re-entry a parachute failed and the telescope was destroyed. All was not lost thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3B powered DRS [Data Recovery System].
More from the Register:
Each capsule included a Raspberry Pi 3B and 5TB of solid-state storage. A parachute, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and an Iridium short-burst data transceiver were also included so the hardware could report its location to the recovery team. The capsules were connected to the main payload via Ethernet, and 24V DC was also available.
“For a relatively small cost, we insured the scientific returns of superBIT against a loss event that came true: high bandwidth communication links failed, then the telescope was destroyed upon landing.”
The design and software is open source and freely available. According to the team, further development is continuing at NASA.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Project Primrose allows makers to display new designs on wearable, flexible, textiles. Here’s more from Hackaday:
The dress uses Polymer-dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) panels from the wonderfully named Shanghai HO HO Industry Co and is designed for use in windows and doors for privacy. It uses an Indium Tin oxide-coated PET film that is opaque by default but becomes transparent when a voltage difference is applied across the material.
These panels are shaped to a hexagonal shape, then wired together with flexible PCBs in a daisy chain. Interestingly, [Dierk] found that the smaller the panels were made, the lower the voltage was required to trigger them. For their canvas example, they dropped the voltage to a much safer -15V to 15V levels to trigger the two states, which is much safer for a wearable device.
The days might be getting shorter but that only means more time for LED displays. These spectacular flowers light up Ashikaga Flower Park. Currently the gardens display the installation Flower Garden of Lights ~Flower Fantasy 2023~. Starting in December they switch to a Christmas Fantasy. From My Modern Met
From now until February 2024, the Ashikaga Flower Park in Japan will be a spectacular display of lights. Over 5 million LED bulbs have been used to create a garden of glowing wisteria, cherry blossoms, and other flora. Visitors can wander the grounds and immerse themselves in a nighttime exhibition that changes theme three times over the duration of its installation.
Have you started your holiday lighting journey this season? The Adafruit Learning System has a ton of projects from beginner through advanced!
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Come on by for JP’s Product Picks of The Week! A new product pick will be revealed. The show airs at 4pm ET / 1pm PT, TODAY!
Check out the livestream right here inside this product page you won’t want to miss it because there will be a HUGE DISCOUNT during the show!
Tune in for:
The live video will also be on YouTube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook. LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat! Come on into the chat to participate in the conversation!!
Every Tuesday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!
The creator of SidecarT discovered that hardware development is a whole different world from software. Insightful post for anyone interested in making the leap to hardware. He covers a lot of ground from getting started to operating budgets and more.
Any software developer with time and dedication can venture into hardware development… if they study A LOT. There’s abundant content online to learn the basics of hardware design. My background in Computer Science, which included fundamentals of computing, laid the groundwork for diving into topics like how level shifters work between 5-volt TTL and 3.3-volt CMOS architectures.
Is it possible to detail 4.5 billion years of history in one hour? Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell tries with this epic, beautiful video. via Youtube
Earth is 4.5 billion years old – which is approximately the same amount of time it took us to create this video.
We’ve scaled the complete timeline of our Earth’s life into our first animated movie! Every second shows about a million years of the planet’s evolution. Hop on a musical train ride and experience how long a billion years really is. It’s the perfect background for your next party, a great way to take a break from studying, or a fascinating companion while you’re on the go … and our celebration of 10 years of kurzgesagt.
From the GitHub release page:
This is CircuitPython 9.0.0-alpha.4, an alpha release for 9.0.0. It has significant known bugs, and will have further additions and fixes before the final release of 9.0.0.
(9.0.0-alpha.3 was discarded due to a build problem, fixed by #8587.)
NOTE: Starting with 9.0.0-alpha.4, CircuitPython uses a new internal dynamic storage mechanism (“split heap”), which will need to be tuned. You may find that some CircuitPython programs fail with MemoryError or RuntimeError: PYSTACK exhausted exceptions. Adjusting the settings.toml value CIRCUITPY_HEAP_START_SIZE may help. Please file issues with examples of programs that no longer load, and whether you were able to fix the problem by adjusting CIRCUITPY_HEAP_START_SIZE.
WARNING for nRF52 boards only: If your board has an nRF52 UF2 bootloader whose version is before 0.6.1, you will not be able to load CircuitPython 8.2.0 and later, due to increased size of the firmware. See these instructions for updating your bootloader.
displayio. 8.x.x naming structure is available in 9.x.x, but will be removed in 10.0.0.displayio.*.show(), I2CPeripheral renamed to I2CTarget.repl.py, which runs just before the REPL starts up.OrderedDict.move_to_end().synthio.Synthesizer.note_state.warnings module, similar to what is in CPython.Firmware downloads are available from the downloads page on circuitpython.org. The site makes it easy to select the correct file and language for your board.
To install follow the instructions in the Welcome to CircuitPython! guide. To install the latest libraries, see this page in that guide.
Try the latest version of the Mu editor for creating and editing your CircuitPython programs and for easy access to the CircuitPython serial connection (the REPL).
Documentation is available in readthedocs.io.
CircuitPython has a number of “ports” that are the core implementations for different microcontroller families. Stability varies on a per-port basis. As of this release, these ports are consider stable (but see Known Issues below):
atmel-samd: Microchip SAMD21, SAMx5xcxd56: Sony Spresenseespressif: Espressif ESP32, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3, ESP32-C3nrf: Nordic nRF52840, nRF52833raspberrypi: Raspberry Pi RP2040stm: ST STM32F4 chip familyThese ports are considered alpha and will have bugs and missing functionality:
broadcom: Raspberry Pi boards such as RPi 4, RPi Zero 2Wlitex: fomumimxrt10xx: NXP i.MX RT10xxxsilabs: Silicon Labs MG24 familystm: ST non-STM32F4 chip familiespulseio.PulseIn race condition. #8575, #8505. Thanks @Snipeye.busio I2C scan example. #8575, #8568. Thanks @dhalbert.lib/tlsf to ci_fetch_deps.py to fix release builds. #8587. Thanks @dhalbert.MP_ERROR_TEXT() instead of translate() everywhere. #8452. Thanks @jepler.mp_rom_error_text_t instead of compressed_string_t. #8531, #8519. Thanks @tannewt and @jepler.Thank you to all who used, tested, and contributed since 9.0.0-alpha.2, including the contributors above, and many others on GitHub and Discord. Join us on the Discord chat to collaborate.
3d-printy shares:
Printing
Can be printed in both FDM and resin
Supports are required under the chin and hands
Minimal infill required
download the files on: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6223419
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord
Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit
Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting
3D Printing Projects Playlist:
3D Hangout Show Playlist:
Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:
Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:
Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:
Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken
Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil
The PlayStation 5 Slim isn’t in consumer hands yet but YouTubers are already tearing them apart. Both Dave2D and Linus Tech Tips go inside and out to give us the details.
Astrophotographers don’t just show up and start shooting. As they always say “Perfect pictures take proper planning” …do they say that? well they should.
Learn some of the steps photographer Dan Zafra took to get some truly magical shots. Via My Modern Met:
He long dreamed of taking his astrophotography to the area, particularly as the park has the largest international dark sky reserve in the world.
Using Google Earth Pro, Zafra began to scout locations where he might be able to view the Milky Way. In particular, he was keen to shoot in the Hooker Valley, a popular walking track that affords breathtaking views. Zafra honed in on Hooker Lake, where it’s possible to see Mt. Cook and the lake together with glaciers
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Come on by for JP’s Product Picks of The Week! A new product pick will be revealed. The show airs at 4pm ET / 1pm PT, TODAY!
Check out the livestream right here inside this product page you won’t want to miss it because there will be a HUGE DISCOUNT during the show!
Tune in for:
The live video will also be on YouTube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook. LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat! Come on into the chat to participate in the conversation!!
Every Tuesday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!
If you enjoy watching horror movies but not being scared, you’re not alone. Scientific American shares the evolutionary reasons behind why we enjoy haunts and horror.
This paradox is now being resolved by research on the science of scary play and morbid curiosity. Our desire to experience fear, it seems, is rooted deep in our evolutionary past and can still benefit us today. Scary play, it turns out, can help us overcome fears and face new challenges—those that surface in our own lives and others that arise in the increasingly disturbing world we all live in.
Drones are a new tool being added to help reforestation efforts. Fires, floods and logging all leave land barren. This stripped land leads to a cascade of other environmental hazards.
Traditional reforestation methods even more labor intensive through steep mountains and valleys. Guam is a great region to test out drones because of its rugged terrain.
Via Washington Post:
“We’ve been planting thousands and thousands of trees,” said Austin Shelton, who oversees a project called Guam Restoration of Watersheds (GROW). “It’s still like putting a Band-Aid on one hole on your shower head.”
Drones, he hopes, will help give his team a leg up.
The researchers also constructed a machine — a spinning plastic drum powered by an air-conditioning motor — that can speed up the process of making seed balls, a combination of seeds, peat moss and red clay soil from the restoration site.
Read more! Could seed-sowing drones transform ravaged landscapes?
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
As time passes, it becomes easier to forget the random but amazing places you never got the chance to visit. “Star Trek: The Experience” was definitely on my list.
While it’s long gone, those who visited still cherish it. The Review Journal takes a look back at the attraction.
“Star Trek: The Experience” was announced with great fanfare on Jan. 24, 1995, with plans to open late the following year to coincide with the show’s 30th anniversary.
When it finally opened Jan. 4, 1998, following multiple delays, fans paid as much as $100 for a preview of the attraction that would cost the general public just $9.95. All 15,000 T-shirts and 15,000 sweatshirts celebrating the maiden voyage sold out on opening day.
We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.
Designing an audio feedback amplifier
Jason Milldrum has been documenting the design of Project Yamhill, the successor to the Willamette Transceiver, also known as the qrp-l Group Project. The purpose of this endeavor is to provide a platform to learn about radio electronics at a system level.
More BLOG:
UPDATED LEARN GUIDE:Adafruit GPIO Expander Bonnet for Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is an amazing single board computer – and one of the best parts is that GPIO connector! 40 pins of digital goodness you can twiddle to control LEDs, sensors, buttons, radios, displays – just about any device you can imagine. This Adafruit GPIO Expander Bonnet will give you even more digital deliciousness – 16 more digital input/output pins are yours for any desire you have. The outputs are grouped into two 16-pin connectors that have a matching ground pin. You can set each pin to be a digital output (high or low) or as an input, with an internal pull-up if you like!
More LEARN
Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!
Olav Martin Kvern built a robot that picks your electric guitar strings so you don’t have to. He has been working on different prototypes of the robot guitar for over 16 years, via Make:
Why Build a Guitar Picking Robot?
Here are a few of my reasons, in no particular order:I’ve been playing guitar, off and on, for over 40 years. At this point, I’m a semi-competent flatpicking guitarist. But I’ve always been interested in the sound of fingerpicking. I’m 65 years old. Do I have 40 more years to learn fingerpicking?
I wanted to be able to play patterns on the guitar that would be difficult or impossible for me to play. Or for almost anyone to play. (John McLaughlin or Yvette Young notwithstanding.)
I’m a writer and software developer. I type a lot, and my hands and wrists are getting worn out.
My sense of rhythm is poor.
What does all of that mean? I need help playing guitar. So I’m building a prosthesis to help me do that, just as I wear glasses to improve my nearsightedness.
Shouldn’t there be accessibility for all gamers for every game? Sony first party games often do a great job with features. And both XBox and Sony have controllers dedicated to access. But what about AA games or indies? What about Nintendo?
Vicky Leta at Kotaku makes the argument for Universal Video Game Accessibility Guidelines:
Another major bummer is the continued lack of standardized accessibility offerings in games. Yeah, there is a set of developer-friendly guidelines published by a group of studios, academics, and specialists to make implementing these features more straightforward, but they haven’t been widely adopted.
There are some truly exceptional games that’ve pushed accessibility forward recently, including Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Forza Motorsport, The Last of Us Part 2. But not every developer has the resources of a major first-party studio. Companies such as Microsoft and Sony are dropping accessibility controllers, but not everyone’s doing that. (Looking at you, Nintendo.) What you get is a patchwork approach to accessible gaming that’s certainly getting better, but is still nowhere near where it could or should be.