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Microsoft's research into accessibility is frankly something that should be celebrated more. The Adaptive Controller is a work of art.

I did some programs for them and wow, they’re really into accessibility. It was a great project.

Yep, honestly the XBox adaptive controller is just fantastic. I personally don’t need it but I’m so happy that the door is wide open for people of all levels of ability are able to get involved with something I love

I swing by their display at PAX every year and they always have such cool shit. It's amazing so few people are talking about this, but not that surprising given Microsoft's reputation.

I hope these devices can be either low cost or able to be covered by insurance. Accessibility should include costs.

I remember them reaching out to Sony to see if they'd let people use the adaptive controller on the playstation but I think sony turned them down.

The one thing that thaws my cold, jaded-by-corpos heart is Microsoft doesn't pay lip service to accessibility. It's the real deal and you can see it in games developed or published by them; it's eye-opening what issues so many people go through with all the options available to adjust the games. Things I wouldn't have even thought of like reducing screen shake or high-contrast mode.

That’s absolutely brilliant and refreshing to hear. Good on you, Microsoft.

And it extends into their other products as well. They've put a lot of work into accessibility even in specialized software like Visual Studio.

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If the controller they released a while back is indicative, they're not going to be super cheap by consumer peripheral device standards, but they will be amazingly inexpensive compared to the existing semi-equivalents.

Current stuff basically assumes you're either loaded or insurance is paying for it in terms of cost (plus they're made by smaller companies which have to make back their R&D plus exorbitant medical certification costs off of a small production run). This stuff will likely be at least somewhat affordable without insurance, but hopefully they have also gotten it certified so that insurance will have a chance of covering it for those who still can't afford it at sticker price.

I always wondered about that but figured that it was just to persuade people to buy an Xbox although it works on PC too iirc

Yeah, pretty much all of the Xbox peripherals also work on PC.

I want to say it works with Switch as well - Microsoft (at least in this arena) are pretty happy to play with others.

I think there are USB sticks that let you use one type of controller on another console (e.g. use Xbox One with Switch) but I've never looked into it. But if that lets you use Xbox One with PS4 or PS5, then to hell with Sony.

Not quite the same, but this is also one reason I love Bungie. The amount of work into settings for the colorblind, quick hotfixes to work on excessive flash or other problematic effects, easy to read and customizable subtitles for almost every voice line in the game, etc. (I’m autistic myself, and struggle parsing spoken word at times, so the subtitles help a lot, but many games make them hard to read).

When I booted Halo Infinite (343 Industries, basically part of Microsoft) many months ago to check it out, I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to accessibility and customization. Some of it was a little buggy or awkward to puzzle out, but one can’t blame the devs for not trying to cater to everyone. It’s a positive trend in recent years, for sure.

The Canadian government has policy regarding accessibility, it seeks its partners to make active efforts to meet certain specifications. Microsoft is one of the biggest clients. Of course this isn’t the only reason Microsoft is going this way, they have been caring about customer experience and being as flawless as possible for a very long time now. Especially with their push to become SaaS, the customer experience has gone up and the apps have been very refined. From simple office apps to the power apps and beyond. The surface devices are great when they work, but still needs some tweaking.

Looking forward to see these in person.

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It even goes beyond the public eye. You can’t even make an internal tool if it doesn’t pass accessibility standards.

Unfortunately the adaptive controller is wired, AFAIK.

Not a problem. Mayflash has one with a USB port on it. So long as it outputs xinput it’ll work

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