guest blogger Archives - The Geeky Gimp

Accessibility Report: HyperX Cloud Revolver S Gaming Headset

Black headphones on a dark blue background

by Lydia Rivers

Note: This review focuses on how the item interacts with my disability. If you wish to read about technical specifications and general features, I recommend Techradar’s comprehensive review. This is not a paid review or endorsement.

Hello everyone! My name is Lydia, and I’m a disabled gamer, writer, and visual novel designer. I’m constantly listening to all kinds of things to help me concentrate and relieve stress; it’s common for me to exceed ten hours’ worth of daily listening to music and other sound-intensive media, whether I’m active at work or sick in bed. I have chronic migraines, dyslexia, and clinical ADHD, so when it comes to a headset, I’m as needy as they get! Numerous symptoms interfere with my ability to utilize most headsets on the market, and it’s difficult to know where to begin because of the chronic lack of information addressing my concerns. Well, I recently purchased a HyperX Cloud Revolver S, and here is my experience for those in a similar predicament!

Learning Disabled and Teaching Tabletop Games

Guest post by James Cole

I have an odd reputation among my gaming friends.

Apparently, I’m a good game teacher.

That by itself is not weird. But if you combine that with the fact that I have a visual processing learning disability, me being a decent teacher is not an obvious connection.

Disability and Ableism in My Hero Academia

My Hero character with light eminating from him

by Michael Meinberg

The following contains spoilers for the show.

My Hero Academia is a new anime about a group of superheroes in training. Like most anime in its genre, known in Japan as shonen, it is action packed, filled with supernatural elements, and aimed at young men. One way that My Hero Academia stands out from its peers is the way it allows its characters to express their emotions in an open and direct fashion. This facet is what drew my attention to the show, and what continues to hold my attention.

Game Developers Conference: A Wheelchair User’s Experience

Cherry in their wheelchair in front of a map display for a game

Guest blogger: Cherry Rae

I recently attended my first Game Developers Conference, which was as intense as everyone who went to GDC promised me. It was also a successful and positive experience for me! However, I encountered some physical accessibility barriers.

I have fierce impostor syndrome and didn’t think I would be half as busy as I ended up being, but I experienced much more of the conference than I thought I would. I was invited to attend as a speaker on a panel discussing the current state of accessibility in games and where we see it going in the future. They also afforded me the opportunity to give the final presentation of the day-long Games Accessibility Conference that runs on the Monday of GDC.

The moment I said yes, I tried to figure out how accessible things would be. Aside from travel being difficult, as an autistic wheelchair user with very limited energy, it’s important that I plan and know what to expect in a busy and intimidating environment.

Eye Win – Windows 10 Update to Improve Eye Tracking for Disabled Gamers

Guest blogger: April

Gaming with a disability can sometimes pose problems for a PC gamer. With many games requiring the use of multiple input devices at once, such as a keyboard and mouse simultaneously, sometimes games become difficult or completely unplayable to folks without certain motor skills. Fortunately, Microsoft is living up to their word and improving the Ease-of-Access options in Windows 10. A new Windows update releasing this month will include support for eye tracking. According to Microsoft’s support page, Ease of Access (found under the control panel) will allow you to control your PC with only your eye movements and the help of hardware by Tobii.

Convention Tips for Spoonies: Nerding Out with Fibromyalgia (and Other Disabilities)

Aerial shot of a convention hall packed with people looking at booths

Guest blogger: Elaine Tamblyn-Watts is an Ottawa-based Anglo-Anishinaabe writer and editor. She was supposed to become a foreign correspondent, but she developed fibromyalgia and had to drop out of journalism school, so now she watches a lot of cartoons and gets a lot more work done. Elaine served as copy editor for The Charlatan for the 2016-17 year, put out a poetry chapbook called Fingernail Moon, and is currently working on about nineteen other projects.

My best friend is a cosplayer. Between her eye for detail, her sewing skills, her sheer resourcefulness, and her courage in the face of frequent glue-gun burns, she’s got a real knack for it – and it shows. For her, our local comic con is bigger than Christmas. She waits for it, prepares for it, works late into the night beforehand and early the morning of. Last spring, she dragged me along with her.

Psyched as I was for us to hang out together, especially in full Teen Titans cosplay, I didn’t handle it super well. The lack of sleep barely fazed her, but it had me looking more like a Walking Dead extra than a 2005-era Cartoon Network Raven. I stumbled through the convention center parking lot with very little grasp of what I was getting into. After five minutes in the main con area, I nope’d back out again to hunt down some coffee and silence. By the end of the day, I was miserable and exhausted, and I figured conventions weren’t for me.

Black Disabled Art History 101 – Book Review

Image of a black man in a room, a young black boy projected behind him on the wall

Guest blogger: Jackie Pilgrim is an advocate diagnosed with Asperger’s, mother to a young adult also on the Autism Spectrum, and an International Speaker on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities. You can find her on Facebook, as well as on her blog, AutismsLove.

A young Black boy born with a physical disability learns about Black disabled musicians from the album covers of his father’s record collection. Later, he would come to realize the strength he gained from seeing those images and listening to their music when having to face teachers and other adults constantly telling him there were no artists who were Black and disabled like him. Leroy Moore’s passion kindled when he was a little boy has come full circle as he draws from his childhood discovery of not being the only, but being one of many Black disabled artists.

Black Disabled Art History 101 will open airways and doorways for Black disabled children’s imaginations to soar as they aspire to become artists or whatever else they want to be. Like Leroy, they too will draw strength from the images, knowledge, music and written words about and born of disabled Black artists. Readers of all ages will enjoy discovering a genre of history little known, beautifully crafted with colorful portraits of artists and their work interwoven with poetry in an age old storytelling style.

Black Disabled Art History 101 is a chronicle of art history unlike any other.

This is only the beginning.

No Dice? No Problem: Web-Based Solutions for Tabletop Gamers

Guest blogger: Lydia Rivers is a writer who enjoys service dog advocacy, gaming, and nerdly fandoms. You can find her with the good folks at Anime Herald, advocacy on her personal blog, and Twitter @Planet_Bork.

The saying is “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but for me, games are apples. Even if I only have time for a single Sudoku, I have to play something to maintain my mental health. And it’s not easy for disabled social gamers. Even if we manage to avoid ableism in our gaming groups, a myriad of other circumstances can physically isolate us from our friends. Many years ago, I developed major depression from limitations interfering with this hobby. Fortunately, for isolated gamers, technology has presented increasingly sophisticated solutions to our problems. Web-based tabletop gaming (and distance co-op in general) has changed my life by enabling my social gamer – and therefore allowing me to avoid comorbid depression.

The Mortiest Morty: Disability on Rick and Morty

Disability in Rick and Morty. Image of two main characters in a green swirl

Guest blogger: Adam Langley is a full-time dweeb and part-time writer, specializing in mental health, disability, and why Jessica Jones is the best Defender.

Disabilities are often treated by popular culture as problems that need to be fixed, as something to overcome. Learning or developmental disabilities in particular are shown to be surmountable if the character in question just works hard enough. Look at Sheldon Cooper. Look at TV shows like Atypical or literally any “special” episode which tries to portray autism or dyslexia. There is an underlying message that, with hard work and perseverance, and the willingness to step outside your comfort zone and let people in, you too can be “normal” – or at least as normal as you can be until the narrative requires a quick gag and your condition is played for laughs.

Night in the Woods: Where It’s Okay Not to Be Okay

Night in the Woods: Where it's OK to not be OK. A cartoon cat image with big, yellow eyes

Guest blogger: Deborah J. Brannon (codename: Geek Dame) spends her days in the Southeastern United States, scribbling furiously as a freelancer and speculative fiction writer. In her free time that may or may not exist – it’s in a box somewhere with a cat, she really doesn’t like opening it – she plays video games and reads books and talks about both incessantly. Find out more at www.geekdame.com or follow her on Twitter at @geekdame.

“The point remains that this is the setup for some great stories.”

“Or terrible, horrifying, traumatic experiences.”

“Great clearly means different things for us.”

Gregg and Bea, Night in the Woods

Welcome to Night in the Woods. There is death here and disappointment and decay. There is also connection and catharsis and care. It’s okay not to be okay, and it’s okay to change your mind. You may face a cosmic horror, or meet the truest heart – all in a playfully illustrated, easy-to-navigate video game.