Sachin Sunil
SpecialEffect
Sachin is a Specialist Occupational Therapist working primarily within the StarGaze project at SpecialEffect, providing assessment and support for people in intensive care following a traumatic injury or illness resulting in severe and complex physical challenges. He has been with the charity for over 3.5 years. With the appropriate setups, individuals can then use a computer again using the access methods best suited for them. Sachin works directly with patients and medical staff to provide ongoing support for adapting these setups as their needs change over time. Sachin is also part of the team helping with making “EyeGaze Games”, free browser games that people can control using a range of access methods including eye gaze, joysticks, gamepads, switches and touch. He is currently helping with the release of these accessible games for iOS and Android platforms releasing this year.
Sachin uses his experience with eye gaze trackers and helped with creating personalised eye gaze controls to make AAA games on PC and consoles eye gaze accessible. Sachin has used similar technology to create an eye gaze accessible interface for controlling a drivable video conferencing robot called “Double 3” that works with AAC devices allowing people with severe physical difficulties to independently explore and communicate in a variety of venues using just their eye movements. Using his experience with assistive technology, Sachin works with third party developers and engineers to add accessibility solutions within their designs and has also been invited to share about his work at international conferences, Universities and games studios including Rare Limited, Bethesda Games Studios and PlayGround Games.
Sachin Sunil is speaking at the following session/s
Mobile Gaming: The Next Frontier for Accessibility
Playing games on mobile devices is more popular globally than any other platform, yet to date, less is known about how to make these games more accessible for people with physical disabilities. SpecialEffect sees opening up the world of mobile games as the next frontier in its mission to make gaming more accessible for physically disabled players around the world. However, there are many challenges to be navigated in doing so, both in terms of game design and making them compatible to the widest possible range of assistive control devices - including eye-tracking. It is for this reason that we decided to help bridge the gap and create mobile games of our own. We aim to use these as ‘proof of concept’ to share with the wider-industry what we consider to be best practice for this growing audience of potential players. If you’re interested to find out more about what we’ve learned so far, as well as seeing some of our new games demoed before launch, then this is the session for you!
Session Takeaway
We will share key lessons learned from our experience creating SpecialEffect's own mobile games for Android and iOS.
Positive and practical suggestions for things you should incorporate into your own game design to make it easier for people with physical disabilities to play, as well as an overview of the different assistive control devices now available for mobile and tablet. devices.
Session speakers
