Andy Feuling talks about one-handed gaming

Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences, through product testing, and custom courses. Learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Andy fueling. Andy is I think going to talk more about gaming rather than specifically, web accessibility. But I think it all falls into the realm of digital accessibility and it's good stuff to know about. Hey, Andy, how are you doing? Andy Hey doing good, how about yourself? Nic I'm doing all right. I'm glad we connected. We haven't really spoken before, but super excited about talking about this topic. Andy Yeah, me too. Me too. Nic So what's your impairment or your disability? Andy Um, so I am missing most of my right arm, I actually have one hand, and a very little portion of my right arm itself, actually. Andy Okay, so how does that impact your gaming? I mean, the obvious thing I could think of is if you have a console controller, which is basically a two handed thing, but is there any? Any other thing that is maybe less obvious9:38, yeah. So yeah, first one, absolutely correct. Controllers themselves for year, I've had issues with constantly because the fact that Yeah, they really are a two handed object. You kind of need both hands to use both sides of the actual controller, primarily the triggers. For a very long time, I was never able to play FPS games, like first person shooters, or any game that really required you to use both the left triggers and the right triggers simultaneously. At the same time, I always ran into that issue. And I had workarounds, you know, like I would, you know, like, jam the controller into my hip, so that I could hit ... or like my thigh, so I could hit the right trigger, or the right bumper if I needed to. But I was always discouraged from playing games like Halo, and Call of Duty, even Forzas games, like with a lot of like automobile games, like you had to use the right trigger. So I always ran into issues with that. And then the only other main thing that I have always seen as a big issue with games was custom button. Yeah, button mapping. So like, you know, you can make certain inputs on your controller different from what they are inside of the game. So say you wanted to make a like left trigger, you could do that. I've always enjoyed it when I found games I could do that with because I could actually customize it to my own specific needs. So yeah, Nic So okay, so apart from controllers what else is there that is a significant barrier for you and gaming? Andy Outside of the actual button mapping, and everything else, I would say it's the competition. And just general play with other people, because the way that I see it, and if you go into and you look around with different players, there are multiple ways you can hold on to a controller. But on top of that you have mouse and keyboard players at the same exact time. I have never been able to play with mouse and keyboard actually. So bringing back too many games, one of the biggest ones is World of Warcraft. I was always, always ran into issues trying to play that game because you kind of do need to have both functionalities of both hands, to press things on the keyboard and to press things or to you know, point and click with your mouse. And so one thing that I've always wanted to be able to see was more customization and