These beer-drinking Colorado friends designed a controller to make pinball more inclusive

bl4kers · January 25

Summary
Inclusive GameWerks, a Colorado startup, has developed a hexagonal pinball controller with three buttons, offering enhanced accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Inspired by a founder's experience with spinal muscular atrophy, the controller is an important step for inclusivity in pinball.

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The friends were hanging out one evening at Haenn and Jacobsen’s house, which has a pinball machine in the basement. At some point, Zack Christofferson mentioned that he couldn’t play because he can’t reach the buttons on the machine.

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After a bit of imagining and tinkering, they built a prototype using a home-bent piece of plexiglass. And it worked. Zack Christofferson was able to hold the controller in his lap while sitting in his wheelchair and play pinball, something he’d never been able to do before. Now, he plays all the time.

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The group applied for and was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Colorado Disability Funding Committee, which supports new and innovative programs that could benefit the state’s disability community.

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Their startup, called Inclusive GameWerks, has produced around 50 controllers since launching roughly a year ago. They’re in use at a handful of Colorado breweries, as well as at several medical facilities, including Children’s Hospital Colorado

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In addition to the controller itself, the Inclusive GameWerks team also created a special harness that hooks into a pinball machine’s circuitry and allows the controller to be connected, according to Alysha Christofferson. The controller doesn’t override the machine’s built-in buttons, so two or more people can still play together on the same machine, even if one person is using the controller.

My thoughts

It's really encouraging to see A) state funding for accessibility initiatives and B) otherwise regular people (not already working in the accessibility space) jumping into action when they see someone impacted. Seems like this group has been quite busy developing solutions for pinball machines, so maybe in the future they could use their expertise to expand into arcade cabinets with similar accessibility concerns.

Sources

Main article (Denver Post): https://www.denverpost.com/2024/01/23/pinball-inclusive-controller-disabilities-colorado-brewery-gamewerks/

Previous coverage (Chicago Parent): https://www.chicagoparent.com/parenting/special-needs/pinball-expo-special-needs/

Website for the Colorado Disability Funding Committee: https://disabilityfundingcommittee.colorado.gov

Note: Looks like they have a meeting tomorrow (2024-01-26) that's accessible via Zoom if anyone wants to tune in. It appears their agenda is supposed to be public, but it's a Google Doc that's private at the moment. I sent them an access request letting them know it's not public.

manikyath · January 25

sometimes all it takes for inclusivity to actually happen is;

- someone needs to realise the problem exists

- that someone needs to be willing to spend an afternoon to think about a solution

the unfortunate thing is that

- people very often refuse to realise problems may exist for people other than themselves.

- people often dont get past stating "something should be done about this" before going on about their day.

dizmo · January 27

On 1/25/2024 at 2:32 PM, manikyath said:

sometimes all it takes for inclusivity to actually happen is;

- someone needs to realise the problem exists

- that someone needs to be willing to spend an afternoon to think about a solution

the unfortunate thing is that

- people very often refuse to realise problems may exist for people other than themselves.

- people often dont get past stating "something should be done about this" before going on about their day.

I think a lot of people have the desire but not the ability. For example this group has programing knowledge, clearly the tools required with the mechanical eptitude, and one owns a bar, so they're good with money and likely have some to spare for the cause. Their friend is also the one affected. Seems like everything lined up.