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I was thinking how awesome it is when developers think of all sorts of players from the very start by ensuring that their entire game, game system, and controller systems are configured for full customization from the start.

It's something that I think every dev, that is capable, should be striving to do in everything they can (even outside of gaming specifically) but as you indicated above it's really awesome for EVERY kind of person, even if I'm not differently abled at all and all I want to do is swap shoot and reload's buttons because of my own personal (even it it's stupid and/or annoying) preference.




One of the things that Microsoft's Inclusive Design efforts have made really usefully clear is that everyone is "differently abled" circumstantially/over-the-course of a day.

It's a silly example: but if I'm eating a sandwich one hand and trying to use a computer, in that moment I'm a one-handed computer user, and can benefit from many of the same one-handed benefits of someone using a computer one-handed for more permanent reasons.

But as silly as that example is, there are so many tiny moments in your day like that that maybe you dismiss them or you don't appreciate how differently abled you are at different points in the day.

It's a bit like thinking through the classic riddle of the sphinx ("what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two during the day, and three in the evening?"). Our "ableness" is never a static constant, and its so useful to think of all the more transient states we live in every day. The more we include everyone, sometimes the better we include ourselves, too.


True, you are right and I've never thought of it that way. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and surely without everyone being "classified" as something we are all incapable or terrible at doing certain things while we are tremendous at others. It's like the fish climbing a tree versus certain types of animals swimming. I love that saying. If you test them at what they were meant to do they'll pass with flying colors. Problem is it's impossible to classify humans in such a visual / species type of way. We are too indistinguishable.




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