The Ablegamers Foundation

Peer counseling and engineering research: Ablegamers peer counseling program consists of players with disabilities and occupational professionals who work together to find The best solutions for people with disabilities to enable play. Peer counseling sessions are a starting point for granting The hardware, custom controllers, and specialized equipment/technologies that can be prohibitively expensive. The Ablegamers engineering research program compliments The peer counseling program by prototyping and creating new controllers and devices, offering unique and customized solutions for players when barriers to current commercially available products exist.in 2022, peer counseling directly supported 210 individuals with disabilities through personal training sessions and further interacted with over 1000 players, reducing barriers to play. This endeavor resulted in granting $25,000 in assistive technology and equipment to disabled individuals. Additionally, within peer counseling, The powered by Ablegamers program increased its outreach through six additional partner sites, facilitating The transfer of knowledge and resources. The expansion resulted in The distribution of $180,000 in resources and equipment to these hospitals and assistive technology centers.engineering research continued The partnership with makers making change to develop The next iteration of The wheelchair joystick, along with updating open-source projects. In addition, engineering research initiated a new collaboration with kupocare to develop a board for mounting switches and to assist with wire management.

Professional development: The professional development program educates game developers through its accessible player experience class. Through this program, abelgamers equips game developers with The knowledge and skills to identify accessibility barriers and devise inclusive experiences for players with disabilities. In addition, The Ablegamers dpad program (developers promoting accessibility and diversity) grants scholarships to current and aspiring game developers who are underrepresented in The industry.in 2022 The program trained 159 developers to discover and rectify accessibility barriers in their games. Training included 31 attendees through The dpad scholarship program. The professional development program also ran a 3-hour interactive workshop for The incoming class of The futuregames school in sweden, including 350 students, faculty, and staff.

User research program: Ablegamers user research program works with gaming studios to investigate, document, and share The current options for players in games as well as document where barriers still exist so that The future of gaming can be where everyone finds a game that they love. The user research program consists of over 400 players with disabilities who provide a data-driven user approach for gaming studios.in 2022, The user research program worked with eleven organizations to reduce barriers in their games and interactive media. These partnerships saw The active involvement of 169 players with disabilities, whose feedback directly shaped The improvements of these projects.

Community and inclusion