Slashdot Mirror
How One Man Helps Keep Game Controllers Accessible
capedgirardeau writes with a clipping from the AP about engineer Ken Yankelevitz: "[W]ith the retired Bozeman engineer's 70th birthday approaching, disabled gamers say they fear there will be no one to replace Yankelevitz, who has sustained quadriplegic game controllers for 30 years almost entirely by himself. The retired aerospace engineer hand makes the controllers with custom parts in his Montana workshop, offering them at a price just enough to cover parts." Yankelevitz builds interfaces to control an Xbox 360 or PlayStation.
TFA: "Quadriplegic gamers now have around a dozen different actions they can work with their mouth."
Damn, I need a quadriplegic gamer consultant to provide training for my wife.
Yes, but due to the dynamics of capitalism, they don't.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Really what a great and admirable hobby. This is a gentleman that must sleep well every night.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
He's not trying to complete on price w/ Microsoft; So there's nothing stopping him from buying an official controller for each one he builds to get the interface hardware. It just becomes part of the BOM cost.
Then he just has to replace the buttons and joysticks with ones that work for his end-users.
This is a quality of life issue, asshat.
Quads spend most of their time confined to a bed. A game controller build to meet their needs opens worlds of interactive entertainment to people who would otherwise be limited to passive consumption (television) or limited interaction via a visual keyboard.
captcha: network
And thats what these people gain: a greater network of human interaction. Shame on you for pissing on that.
As a gamer who has a mild neurological condition that limits fine motor control in one of my hands... and have become increasingly annoyed at the complexity of controllers and control schemes (the shoulder buttons on a dualshock controller are particularly hard to reliably control)...
I both salute this man, and I wonder what kinds of games one can actually play with such a controller... the amount of reflexes and reaction time required to play most (90%?) of the games, seems like it would be beyond what you could convey through one of these devices in a useful amount of time..
If someone wanted to fill his shoes, it wouldn't be an easy task.
He puts each controller together by hand, using his engineering skills to solder dozens of switches and circuits. Controllers are offered for just over $200 and include a 1-year warranty for repairs.
"If the bottom line is profit, there's no way to make a profit on these," Yankelevitz said.
Yankelevitz said larger companies and game manufacturers have shown no interest in producing the controllers because the market is so small. He's sold just over 800 of the devices through 30 years. Factory construction of the controller would be cost prohibitive, over $1,000 each.
Man builds 30 years of quadriplegic gaming
Why do you assume that all disabled people are that way because they made some stupid decision? Oftentimes, it's because some other person, like a drunk driver, made a stupid decision, but these people have to pay for it. But there's otherwise nothing wrong with them and there's no reason why they should be removed from the gene pool or made to suffer even more than they already are.
Also, you seriously misunderstand how evolution works. Removing a couple of obvious failures from the system doesn't necessarily produce a better gene pool. The genes for stupid behaviors are complex and varied, if they even exist at all, and many, if not most of us, are probably carriers. Furthermore, the stupid are themselves carriers for good genes. By only explicitly selecting the "good" and getting rid of all the undesirables, we not only fail to solve the problem, but we also destroy good genes as well as genetic diversity.
Social Darwinism doesn't work. Never did, never will.