Assistive Tech (AT) Show-and-Tell with the Inclusive Tech Lab. Feb. 2024

We will do our best and if folks can hear me, OK, we'll kind of get started in a minute. I'll I'll play the Super Bowl ad now. That's good. Thanks, Jake. I'll play the Super Bowl ad in the back because I think a lot of people recognize it. And but what's funny is that you know, it was a great ad. Those kids were awesome, but I'm gonna tell you the origin story when we get started and we didn't start with little kids, so it'll be good. You'll get to. You'll get to see kind of where we actually st

arted. Actually, what I'll do too, so I put together like a list of resources. You know, for people to refer to you, all should be able to see that. Umm. So in in there there's some links to not only some of the resources that we've kind of collected over the years. The first and foremost being the support site, but there's some really good stuff in there. I'm gonna. I linked to as many of the now peripherals that I'm gonna show today as I can in that in that deck. So we can, and we're gonna go

through that. So just to kind of like give you all an overview of how, how this is gonna go today, I'm gonna give you like an intro into why we did it and sort of how the the the device was developed. I'll lightly touch on like, maybe not lately. I'll touch on like how modular input for gaming is enabled through the Xbox Adaptive Controller. I wanna spend a lot of time though on showing you like basically options for things that can be plugged in. And yeah, that's what we'll kind of do today. So

what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to show you where the the adaptive controller actually started. This is a video from our 2015 hackathon where we met Ken Jones of Warfighter engaged in Sergeant Josh Price here, and Ken was building rigs for vets who are injured. Who couldn't use a regular controller? And he used a bunch. We used a bunch of different things. He basically take a game controller and crack it open and break it apart and sort of enable people. Through soldering wires to to

an existing Xbox controller, and that was that was when we met Ken. That's how we met Ken. He came to to Microsoft and basically made us realize that like we've created the barrier. So according to the social model of disability, we created the disability because we were gating interactions through this device. Our beloved Xbox controller so. Ah ohh Bob. Can't hear any sound. Ohh sorted good great Bob cool. So with our beloved Xbox controller, this thing had been optimized over so many generati

ons. This is a 9th generation game controller, so that's the latest Xbox and Sony game controllers are considered 9th generation generation. One is the Tari 2600 controller, which I will show you in a minute a little bit later on we'll see some Gen 1 controllers, but like over all those generations of devices, they were optimized around a primary use case that made a ton of assumptions on how they were supposed to be used, right? Game controllers assume you have two hands to hold them, that you

have two thumbs for these sticks that you have a fluid range of motion to get to all these bump buttons that you have the reach with your index finger. To get to these bumpers and triggers, right? Those are these are all assumptions that you can that it has game controllers. Assume that you have the strength and the endurance to hold it, and So what we had to recognize and when we met guys like Josh, we had to recognize that we created the barrier for people who couldn't use the controller as it

was designed. And that's what how the social model of disability works. That's one of those things that we always sort of imagine and think about. And while the social model of disability is not the only model of disability, there's lots of them. You should pay attention. I'm to the mall and kind of understand. Umm them. But you should recognize that the social model of disability puts the onus on product designers to basically know when we have. We're the ones that created the disability. So y

eah, game controller. So what do we do? We went away. We met, we met some other folks are gonna show you another video. Umm, this is another guy we met. This is Corporal Todd nicely. Thought a bit. And Todd, Todd came to us with Ken again for more fighter engaged. This was all before the adaptive controller and you can see here that Todd's a quad amputee and and basically he had a custom rig built for him by Ken that not only leverages like that leverages all four of his his limbs, you know so a

nd right now he's playing right now. He's playing killer instinct, but he really wanted to play Call of Duty back then. I was a I wasn't sure if I should, but if I should play Call of Duty with the vets. But you know what? They all love playing Call of Duty, so that's their that's their jam. So yeah, again modularity. How do we think about devices? I will say that as we think about the Xbox Adaptive Controller, for me, you know, being on this journey, we we definitely started from a very specifi

c place and kind of worked our way out. So I don't want to pretend like we made a joystick for any particular type of limited mobility, but we we definitely started with limb difference. We moved on to quadriplegia. We moved on to cerebral palsy and then we moved on to neuromuscular conditions. So whereas I think we're really strong in limb difference and neuromuscular and quadriplegia and cerebral palsy, we have things that we could have done better. I think with neuromuscular conditions, but y

ou know we still do a pretty good job, but I think there's still a lot of work for us to kind of do there. So Ohh, actually I'm going to get something to show you guys because I don't ever get to show this very much. So one SEC. I'll be back. Drunk button. Spend all day setting up in here and I forgot these things. I'm gonna show you the original prototypes from the hackathon project for the adaptive controller. So when we met Sergeant Josh Price, this was the original prototype that we made. It

is an add on for an elite controller that plugs into the bottom through the PMD port. This is ports that happen on Xbox controllers, so we created this, you know, quickly to, to, and rewrote the firmware on the device to to allow for people to basically plug in wires and have them fire up buttons. So that was the first Gen prototype. And the second Gen prototype, which was done a year later, which was done by some students, started to incorporate 3 1/2 millimeter switch ports. There isn't enoug

h ports there for every aspect of the controller, so we were going to leverage splitters and that just became complicated. Plus, there is the reason why we were using going in this direction was that we always wanted people to, if they were able to use part of a controller to be able to use part of a controller. We didn't want people to have to buy things that they didn't. You know that they didn't need, so we always wanted to make sure that people could use parts of a control that they have. It

was really important to us, but there was actually a feature that really kind of opened up not only like how we approach the making of the device, but actually different types of input, which was called Xbox Copilot and Xbox Copilot. Actually came out about a year before the Adaptive Controller was even launched. And what Xbox Copilot allows you to do it allows you to take any 2 Xbox controllers and tell the system that they're one controller. So it gives you that ability to basically like say

these two are one controller. So if you, let's say you're our limb different and you can use like this half of a controller you might use the other one on your chin to like basically move the stick and you basically be able to like modularize your your controller system that way and that really gave us the freedom to open up what became the the the Xbox Adaptive Controller. So, for those who who've never seen it, I'm, you know, here's the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Abd Pad View menu Xbox button b

ut on the back is 3.5 millimeter switch port for every aspect of the of a game controller. There's 19 switch ports, and there's also USB ports on each side for joysticks, so this is how the device works. If you're not familiar with switches, switches are used really very often in the disability community, and if you've seen they're they're really quite common and we didn't want to reinvent anything there. And So what I want to show you about switches I switches are actually really simple. So wha

t I've got here is I have this is a piece of this this. This wire is basically lighting wire like what you'd use with the lamp, and then there's this 3 1/2 millimeter mono switch that basically has these little see if I can get that in focus. I don't think I can a little too close, but you, you basically just screw these in two parts of the wire and then on the other side of the wire I have these two connectors. So what am I going to do? I'm going to plug it in to the B button on the controller.

Going to hold this up and hopefully when I touch these together. Yeah, it backs out. So I'm hitting B on the controller loop going into Minecraft. Now I hit BBB and that's all the switches right. So I'm going to actually remove it from that port and I'm going to plug it into the a port, then wire. I'm gonna actually. I'm gonna. I'm going to unplug it for a second. I'm going to take this arcade button, which you can get on Amazon. They're about $1.50. I'm gonna plug it into these connector ports

that I have in this wire. And all the normally open switch does is it finishes the connection and that's what fires the button. So just like touching the wires together. So if I plug it in here, when I press this button Alex, there should jump up and down. Which she is. It's easy. That's what switches are. Switches are really aren't really that complicated, but what you can do with them is it tends to be pretty powerful. Umm. Ohh yeah, that's pretty cool, David. That David's saying that people

have. Taking old USB mice apart and made switches from them, which I think is really ingenious. I will say that I think. I wish we were a little bit more relaxed with umm, what can be considered a switch and So what I mean by that is you know if you if you look at the cost of of switch interfaces and devices, it can get pretty pricey. But if you know if the manufacturers of switching of switch software would allow people to, say, set buttons one and two on mouse on mice to to be switches, you ca

n get a everyone's got a 2 button mouse somewhere in a drawer right now of a sudden you're reusing all those things. It's one of those things that I think about quite a bit, OK, so I'm gonna show you this setup that I have here, but I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to move some stuff around. Is there any questions? I think before I go into this sort of setup, you'll move back too. OK. I don't see Q&A and it's no problem seem to be pretty good. So I'm trying to show I'm gonna back up because

I wanna see there's a button on the floor. Alright, you have to take my word for me that there's a button on the floor. I don't know if I can back up quite that much. All right, that's work. So what I've got here in this setup and today I'm going to just use the Xbox Adaptive Controller just as it comes. I'm not going to do any of the remapping or any of the other kind of special features of it, because there is quite a bit of software features with the device beyond Copilot, but for now I'm ju

st gonna use it as is cuz I wanna show people sort of what's possible. So to refer back to like Todd and Josh, the whole point of the adaptive controller and the reason why we called the adaptive controller is that it adapts to you and not you to it. So the whole point of it is that we're trying to make this thing work so that you can put a button or switch or a joystick where you have movement, right? So when people come in, we get a lot of folks who come in who've been injured and they talk to

us and they framed their challenges in terms of what they're missing. So if someone comes in and they're limb different and they just recently become limb different, they often refer to to what they're missing and what we try to do with with the people that kind of come in here and work with us here in the inclusive tech lab is to ask people to tell us what they can move and not what they can't move or what they don't have. Right. So we put buttons wherever people have movement. We taped button

s to eyebrows. We learned that from special effect. There's lots of things that we put buttons on, So what I'm going to show you right now is actually I'm gonna go over. I'm gonna pull it back for just a SEC. Sorry, should have practiced this more little more so. I'm going to show basically what you can kind of see here is. So I've got the adaptive controller. There is a makers making change. Ivy Nunchuk adapter on a Wii on a we nunchuck there is a bunch of switches. One of them's plugged into t

he floor. There is a some switches here from the Logitech Adaptive gaming kit. Some of them are labeled, some of them aren't, but we'll use them to play Minecraft, and then I have over here. I have a makers making change oak joystick OK and then on the floor I have a a buddy button and ablenet buddy button John. Yeah. OK, let's get that back set up. No, I tilted. Great. OK, so got Minecraft. Alex is there. We nunchuck Alex is moving forward. Left stick, you know, just as you'd expect to look aro

und, I've set up the oak bugged in to the X2 port and I'm going to use my face to move around with right stick. So if someone can only use one hand, you know this is a viable way for them to to use it. The other parts of the big buttons when you have something like a like this nunchuck style controller, is the big buttons allow you to basically hold this and still hit these other big buttons. So it's another way to kind of think about that modularity. So one more thing I'm gonna do is I'm actual

ly going to put this down for a minute. I'm not gonna use it, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna focus on the button I have on the floor. One of the things that you can do with the Xbox Adaptive Controller and this is right out of the box I have this Big Blue button on the floor plugged into the X1 port and X1 by default is left stick forward. So if I step on this button Alex on the screen is gonna run forward. So what does that mean? Means that in a in a third, in a third or first person game. You can ba

sically play with no hands. Well, except the this setup I have, but so I'm running around. I'm steering with right stick, so I'm steering with my face. Look at all the bunnies. And then if I let my foot off the button, if I depress the button it'll it will. You know it'll stop running, so I've set it up this way to show you a bunch of different ways that you can kind of and kind of play. So I'll put this one back in here. This one's moving again so I can do a I can do jump, I can do B, which is

Crouch. I can do text which brings up this menu B to get out of it. Why brings up the inventory menu be to get out of it now? These two buttons over here are bumpers, so I'm gonna move through my inventory. I'm gonna basically, ooh, look down and let's spawn some parrots. I'm gonna spawn some more parrots. So that's how we think about modularity. I'm doing it with these large buttons right now, but yeah. That's that setup. Honey, you know, I don't know how long I was gonna be today because I was

kind of a, but we're going, OK? How are we doing so far, folks? Any questions or anything? Great. So yeah, I wanted to show you all. So switches are simple. Oh, there are questions in the Q&A. Cool. Thank you. How are you connecting the nunchuck to the Zach? OK. Robin, that's a good question. I am using a makers making change Ivy Nunchuck adapter, so this is the plans for this are up on the makers making change website and I have LinkedIn. The document that I put umm in the in the chat ther

e's a link to the page for this for this device. What type of mounting are or are you using the mounted the oak joystick? Wow, good. I didn't talk about mounting today, but it's actually interesting. Jake, like there's lots of mounting, is really hard. I don't know exactly what mounting arm this is off the top of my head. I must admit I tend to look for 11 inch or longer cheap stuff on Amazon because I don't. I have a bunch of manfrotto stuff. I have a bunch of a RAM mount. Have a bunch of all a

ll kinds of mounting, but I must admit I I personally like to see how cheap I can be with a lot of this stuff cuz I wanna tell people like I don't wanna have to tell people that this mounting that I'm using is like $200. I kinda learned this philosophy from like this place. Most curious is OK and that's cool. I'll, I'll I can follow up with some mounting stuff. Umm I I learned this philosophy. I visited this hospital in Jerusalem called Arlene and they used consumer grade medical equipment throu

ghout the hospital because their philosophy was that, you know, if people are gonna go home, they didn't want them to get used to hospital grade or medical grade equipment and then go home and have to get used to home home equipment. So they would have like home ventilators throughout the hospital and things like that. So yeah, I always try to find like the least expensive options that I can. But you know, I do have some ram mount and some mojo Mountain. Other other kind of more traditional moun

ting that you'd see in the disability community. Thanks for letting me know that there are questions and yeah, and Jake just threw in the IV. Umm, some resources for money. That's cool, Jake. I'm gonna follow up with you about that about mounting. OK, alright, so I went through that. So let me talk a bit more about Copilot for a second, because Copilot's one of those things that can really empower folks and it's starting to and it keeps getting better, it's slowly keeps getting better and better

, so. I'm going to show you a setup that I've got over here. I'm. I'm not gonna be able to demo it cause I can't switch games that quick, but but it's a it's a decent setup. And and all these resources are in. What I sent you? So this is a Horry steering wheel and what's great about this particular hori steering wheel for Xbox series X&S is that you can Copilot it so you can set this up as a Copilot it device, and, you know, use it. And So what? What I'm trying to show here is I'm going to u

se this. This is a war fighter engaged switch, and again I I've got it in the resources. This one is for heads, so it's like a head array on a wheelchair. It's also for legs. It's basically just a why it's actually for anything. It's just a why switch that like you can go in either side and so really simply I can take like these two switch ports. I could go into an adaptive controller. I could go ohh right trigger left trigger right and then all of a sudden like I can use my head to accelerate a

nd and and reverse and then if I can get a grip on this, what maybe I get one of those grip assistant gloves that are available now. The sudden like just with a few simple things I can have full access to a racing game, but it's only because designed for Xbox peripherals are starting to become Copilot table which is which is really cool and it's starting to open up a lot. I'm going to show you some more. Umm, this one's brand new. I couldn't even find. I've got a link to it in the document, but

I couldn't find the the the web page for it. This is the HyperX Tanto Mini controller. I love small controllers, so this is a wired one, so you need it. Is core Designed for Xbox? Controllers aren't wireless. This one wired it's super light and it's really small. So for some folks like this could actually be super powerful because like sometimes controllers are just too big. But you can Copilot this to an adaptive controller, too, yeah. Tyler the IT is, it is really cool. The Tonto is really nic

e. I'm always on the lookout for small controllers. It's always really hard. Ohh I'm gonna get to the and then sort of lastly. Spent for of the Copilot devices, I want to show you this is a hoary fight. Stick for Xbox series X&S and you can you can set this up actually as a game controller and you can Copilot it so it's got a traditional kind of clicky sort of joystick here for someone who might not have a lot of fine motor control. You know, there's some buttons. They might just want someth

ing that looks a little bit more traditional like this. We certainly see folks all the time. Who? Who want arcade sticks? And then and there's a whole and there's. I'll I'll show you some other sort of options that we've kind of that I've made over the years, but I want to get on to, I wanna start showing some of the things that can be plugged in. And I think first and foremost, who I'd like to kind of acknowledge because they were wonderful partners for us was Logitech G They made the Logitech

G Adaptive Gaming kit, and this device was sort of a this this set of of switches was was a godsend. They actually just so you know, if you they also make a version of this for the new PlayStation Access controller. And if one of them's out of stock, you can get the other one because they're just switches, right? Like I just showed you, what switches are? It is. You might want the stickers, the right stickers for the system that you want, but the actual devices will work and the greatest things

about like you know this was this one for the Xbox was $100 and came with 12 switches and it came with switch mounting. My one of my favorite parts of the switch mounting was that they had these boards. Are you able to blend inputs via Copilot? I'm going to have answer that in a second John. So this this is a a mounting for the switches. It's flexible. What I like about it is that you can not only mount switches flat, but you can think about mounting switches up a face too. So all of a sudden, i

f you don't have a lot of movement, you could put a switch here. You could put a switch here. You could have two right different movements. Don't just think of switch layouts in these two D I'm ways. Think about them in 3D ways as well. So John is a question, are you able to blend inputs via Copilot? If I have someone who can do most of the driving, but night might need some assistance here and there, can I have a Copilot controller take over? Yeah, absolutely. So the whole reason why we made Co

pilot and actually the reason why we sold how we sold Copilot to our executive team was that we told this story of, like, really little children playing video games and not doing so well. And then the parents come in and they show up and they try to take the controller to show them how they do it. And the kids starts crying because they didn't want their controller taken away. But the thing about Copilot is we could Copilot 2 controllers together and then the parent could be there helping the ki

d. Kind of nudging them along the way as they were going through a game and that's and we've done that a lot. So you can certainly be a persons Copilot. That was the reason why we called it Copilot. Now everything in Microsoft Copilot, so they'll probably change the name of Xbox Copilot. I don't know if they will, but they I wouldn't be surprised. But like yeah, you can the the devices are are there, it it really isn't that complicated. Like if you Copilot it 2 controllers and on one you move le

ft stick fully to the right and the other you move left stick fully to the left it would. Your character would be like kind of moving back and forth in the middle because they're equal. There's no way to say like 1 Copilot controller is 60% and the other 140%. They're just equal. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. I'm going to go into the Q&A. Cool. So yeah, hopefully so far, so good. Umm other things I have over here just to kind of show. This was my box of where I had the the home

made switches. There's actually a lot of switches you can get on on Amazon switches. Like I said, they're industrial things. This is a really lightweight one. It's nice. I've I've wrapped it in he drink tube so that you can basically use it, but yeah, I make a lot of switches. I don't make as many switches as Tyler and Chad do, but I make a lot of switches. Alright, let's go through some other ones. This is fun, OK? And I move over here. That's hard to steer this camera. Sorry folks. Back up the

bed. OK, so stuff in here that I wanted to kind of show. Because there's all kinds of switches in the world, and this is in a tech ultralight. This is a very, very good switch. This is like a worker horse. There's an equivalent ablenet ultralight. These are for people who have very little strength. They're very light touch. This is a bite switch. This is actually made for skydivers. This one, this one. So this was one you'd put in your mouth, and it's a bite switch. This is more of an industria

l foot pedal. Umm, you can buy these. You can buy these, but I actually made this one. You can because the foot pedals themselves. If you buy bulk foot pedals, they're really cheap and then just attaching a 3 1/2 millimeter to them isn't really that hard. So that's one that I made. Umm, this is a proximity switch. This is enable net. I think it's called the mini candy corn. There's a bigger one, this one you just have to sort of wave your hand over it and it will fire the switch. It takes a batt

ery. I mean, it's basically like the towel dispensers and restrooms and things like that. There's a more ablenet switches, we've got a spec switch here, and then there's a big buddy. And then over here, this is a buddy, a Jelly Beamer switch and the receiver. So this is a wireless switch, but to show other people who make switches, this is a smooth a smoothie. I think it's called a smoothie. It's a smoothie from. Pretorian new. OK, I'm gonna let someone in. So smoothie switch. Great. Switch some

other fun stuff here. This is from enabling devices and this is a sound activated switch. So you basically plug a microphone into this where it has a microphone, but you can also plug one in and it will fire a switch when you hit a certain decibel threshold. And it also has the ability to latch the switch and you can time adjust it. So it's quite an interesting device. Umm, you know, it's interesting to see how a lot of these things that you used to have to buy specialty devices for, we're tryi

ng to build into our newer systems. Umm, this is a a latch box from one switch in the UK. Umm, so this is a. This is a a switch that allows you allows you to do latching. So latching is basically for those who might not know, you press a button and it stays pressed until you press it again, and that's what a latching switch is. And then this is enable net dual SLA TI don't think I couldn't find the link for this so this is a this is another timer based switch and another latch box. I couldn't fi

nd the link to where to get those. I don't know if they make that anymore, but that's that's switches there. So these are are a bunch of the small ones. I wish sort of showing. Yeah. You're welcome, Bob. I've got some more stuff with your stuff to show too. What's the lifetime average switch in a rig? Ohh, like how long do you switches last? Jonathan, I think that's a good question. Actually, I think it's really it varies a lot. I mean, it depends on how it depends on how. How much you hit it? I

will say that like. I've never I know how long the switch is in the adaptive controller. Last, I don't know if I can say like in general how long switches last. I think it really depends on the switch and especially if you're talking about someone with high tone, it can get pretty gnarly. OK, I'm gonna move over there. Any more questions about those other switches for a second? Alright, set this up. OK, going to check the Q&A. OK, back to the chat. OK, so I got a lot of stuff here actually

going to turn myself around here so that I can I can kind of see a little bit of what I'm what we're showing. These are a bunch of joysticks. Whole bunch of joysticks. 1st I'm gonna start off with umm this. There's this great guy in Texas. He's got this Etsy, he's got this Etsy store called 7 Mile Mountain and he's he's putting out a ton of stuff, so he's putting out like adapters for we nunchucks or we nunchuck stuff, things he's putting out. This is a Dome Dome style joystick that works really

well with the Zac and then this one is actually a touch based joystick. I love this thing. So basically like it's just capacitive, but this is a joystick for folks who who want capacitive. I think we could do better on the sensitivity curves on in the Zach to make something like this a little bit more viable, but the fact that this exists is really wonderful. You know, I I you know, I know we're all sort of sensitive to the cost of a lot of assistive technology. So I wanted to show some things

here that are that are pretty inexpensive that you can get. This is a trooper 2 from is it? Is it hyperkin? Yeah, from hyperkin. So this is the Atari 2600 first Gen joystick that I was talking about. But you know, if you if you were old enough to remember Atari 2600. You know, I think this is better quality than an Atari 2600 joystick, but it's it's not. It's not super great. I mean, it's OK. It's, you know, but it's it's really inexpensive and if this is the kind of thing that you want, this wi

ll plug into the Xbox Adaptive Controller. And then for your Commodore 64 fans, there's one here too that has a whole bunch of more buttons. Again, super inexpensive. One of the workhorse joysticks that we talk a lot about when it comes to the adaptive controller is the Ultra Ultra Stik 360, and this is a version of the Ultra Stick 360 with a body point sort of handle on it. This one comes from. This one comes from from quad stick, so the people who make quad stick this is one there and then the

re is a fancy ultra stick made by 1 switch with this nice cool. Uh, with this nice, cool shiny handle. But the Ultra stick is great. I will say that for for some folks who need a tea bar mounted joystick, this is a good option. It's really robust, but I wish it didn't spend. But the way that the joysticks constructed it spins, so sometimes folks get a little off kilter. With this guy with especially if you've got the like a any kind of tea bar, goalpost kind of mounting Turkey. OK. I was going t

o say I had a yeah, yeah. Ohh thanks Jake for letting me know about the the. Yeah. The able net two other joysticks flightsticks I will say that when we started with the adaptive controller, you know we worked with Logitech for this extreme 3D Pro. It was. It was really easy to get. It was fairly inexpensive and we looked at we didn't really know a lot back then. So we we used this, I will say about flight sticks in general, lots of flight sticks do work with the Xbox Adaptive Controller, but th

e way that you configure them can be a little bit tricky. The other flight stick I have here and I'll get into that the other flight stick I have here is the Airbus. Is this brand new line of Airbus flight sticks from Thrustmaster? This one in particular, you can set it to Xbox or PC mode, so if you set it to Xbox mode it will play it's for Flight Simulator. It won't play anything else but Flight simulator. The cool thing about this is that these these two pieces here on the left and right pop o

ff and you can have, like other ones pop in. So you can basically design this stick to be either primarily left handed or right handed. The reason why I say flight sticks are tricky is that through the USB ports on the Xbox Adaptive Controller, we only accept 8 buttons and these and flight sticks have more than eight buttons, so there's lots of stuff on flight sticks that just don't translate. Umm, you know and and you know I we've heard a lot of feedback about that. We continue to hear feedback

about it. You know, we have reasons, but you know, always tell us your feedback and we'll get it to the right place. But yeah, I like this one. This one's brand new. I just got this one another pretorian. Optometry 6. It was really great to get this on the system this one has and and this is actually the one that we give people when they don't like that this one twists right is that we we give them this one this. This does not twist. This will your hand will stay there at the to stick doesn't m

ove umm. So this will plug into the adaptive controller. You can put some switches on. It's another wonderful joystick for the the Doctor controller. Cool, cool, cool. All right, moving on again. We do it all right. It's so weird not being able to. You see folks? The thumbs up. Thank you. Thank you, David. OK. So what I got here bringing show here. This is a quad stick and it's just on a stand. It wouldn't really be mounted like this. None of these would be mounted on these stands. I'm using the

se RAM out stands because I didn't want to bolt them to the table. Spending their centuries and yeah, I will. Tyler, I will. I will on that let me save that one for like a Q&A thing. Umm. So yeah, this is a. This is the. This is the quad stick. Umm wonderful mouth control device has three sip and puff tubes and this 4 sip and puff tuned is a mode changer and then this button here acts like a shift button. So there are lots of tetraplegic gamers that can do everything with just this device. I

t's a wonderful device. We wanted to have that with the Xbox Adaptive Controller. The reason why there is a power port for a wall mounted plug on the Xbox Adaptive Controller is that this device draws more more power than what USB can charge a device with. So it's we, we were in a we were in a situation where if you plug two of these into an adaptive controller would have been possible to drain the battery faster than we could charge it. So that's why for non low powered USB devices there is an

optional DC port, so the next one that I'll show is a a bit of a A. It's actually kind of old now, so this is a. This is the lip sync from makers making change and I say it's old because there's a brand new lipsync that the makers making change has just published specs for. This is an original lip sync. The new lip sync looks wonderful. I can't wait to build 1. Umm, gotta get some folks in on that, but that's a that's something that's really, really fun. And so you probably are looking at, you m

ight be looking at this, wondering what this is. This is a really fun story, so we always see people use controllers with their face and we were over in Paris and we were working with the folks who make. When when one of the what's the charity called CANAM? I think it's called Kanam. Umm. And we were there and at their booth at a game show, they had this, they had this little mounty thing for for Xbox controllers. And it just kind of slides onto this to a man Prado arm. And I was like, what is t

his? And it's this little thing that you can buy. You can still get them. It's basically, but what it's for is. It's not for mounting controllers like this so that you can use them with your face. This is so that you can hook up a hookah pipe to your Xbox controller so that you can basically smoke and play games at the same time. That's what this is meant for is that you put a hookah pipe in there and you plug this into your controller so that you could have like, a a hookah attached to your con

troller, which I think is hilarious and but awesome like, I mean, it works so well. One thing that I kind of wanted to show. For any kind of face mounting stuff or or using game controllers in general, these are silicone stick extenders and grips by foamy lizard and they you know there's different heights. Them are taller than others. They have different patterns, but I really recommend these a lot to people. Sometimes people come in and they're like, oh, my sticks are just a little too short an

d I just pull this out. It's like 10 bucks for a pack and all of a sudden, like, you know, problem solved. But that is also in the link in the in the chat there. Alright, keeps on going. This isn't even all my stuff guys. I know this is a like I'm just showing you different stuff I've like so many different things. I love this device. This is by a wonderful man named David. He runs an organization out of France called hit. Click. This is one of his original devices. He's got so much nicer ones n

ow. I got to like go and update my collection a bit with hidden stuff, but hit click there's a link again in that document to stuff that he's got. This is totally homemade. Umm. And what I wanted to show about this is that sometimes arcade parts can be really, really handy, and they're they're fairly inexpensive. So this is a tray, a cheap serving tray. Cheap wooden serving tray and two joysticks for like from an arcade setup like for those guys who wanna set up like arcade boxes in their home o

wn home. So you wanna search on Amazon for for Maine controller USB or something like that? Again, it's in the chart and what I did here was a basically on the back, I I leave this flap that you can open it up, but you can kind of get at all the two US, there's these two USB controllers, so you'd put in a USB cord through each of these slots and slot you plug it in here and it allowed me to create this kind of arcade style. These are for movements. If you've never seen a joystick like this or a

a set like this, so this is for like fighting games like people who wanna have like this kind of setup. So it's I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's basically like WASD, but on, you know on a keyboard. But this is this is relatively inexpensive. I think both. I think both kits of joysticks and buttons were like less than $50.00 and and yeah, and then the tray was like 5 bucks or whatever. Again, sometimes you know you just want to have things that, umm, you. You just you just need somet

imes things to be a little bit different. So what I have here is this is an another one of those main USB arcade setups. But what I've done is I've mounted it, I've mounted it into this generic fight stick enclosure that you can buy on Amazon. Again, links in the in the dock, but I mounted it. I mounted this enclosure upside down to make it basically a left handed version of a fight stick because you can't really find left handed fight sticks, you know, so all this just one single controller plu

gs into the adaptive controller and again this adaptive controller is mounted on a little stand that's ram mount. It's using the mounting on the back of the adaptive controller. You know that's built into the device. But the reason why I have this set up like this is again to think about like well, you know you can, you don't have to be flat, you can go in different dimensions and think about all those sort of things. So that was everything I wanted to show and I am happy to take more questions

and I'm going to set up this camera better. Am I right in thinking these are all boxes of switches, but the Xbox Adaptive Controller is the microcontroller know Arduino in these controllers, so I can't speak for the makers making change stuff. There's definitely some Arduino in there. Everything that I showed was most of what I showed was was switches, things like the oak joystick that I showed in the very beginning from makers making change. That's just a 10K potentiometer and and so you can bu

y the there. That's really simple. We we we allow you to plug a 10K potentiometer into the X1 and X2 ports. That was that was us acknowledging that there were a bunch of makers out there who didn't want to have to use Arduino just to make a joystick, which has been really great. I mean, it was. It was wonderful. Ken Jones actually asked us to do that and we did it, and now the the PlayStation Access controller supports those two. So it's really cool. Umm that you know you can basically use a 10K

potentiometer based joystick on both of the adaptive controller and on the PlayStation controller. Umm. So yeah, so, yeah, sorry David, I'm not answering that 100% firmly. It's always kind of a bit of both. I want to get back to Tyler's question. Would would I be willing to expand on the decisions into the number of buttons through USB? Just curious. Yeah, I will own up to the fact that that was me. We didn't. I didn't know at the so at the time, a PlayStation 3 controller was a HID controller

and there were versions of PlayStation 3 controllers, and I didn't want someone to plug in a PlayStation 3 controller and and basically like have full access to it. Umm, there were. There were a lot of things when we were developing this that we were just really nervous about. We didn't know. We didn't wanna make umm, we didn't want the adaptive controller to become this like device that could open us up to. To to things that we weren't aware of. So we were very conservative at first. I actually

only was going to let four buttons in, but we we loosened up and moved it to 8. That being said, you know I think it's something that we could totally revisit. I think it's one of those things that I mean, you know, we always wanted to try to revisit this stuff, but it's one of those things that I think we kind of could get back to. I will say that I'm I don't work on the adaptive controller day-to-day anymore. It's more Caitlin Jones of Warfighter engaged. She's also of Warfighter engaged. She

's of Xbox, she works for Xbox. She works on all this stuff, day in, day out. When she also works at Warfighter engaged. So Tyler, I hope that answers your question. I know it's not a great answer, but yeah was my fault. So. Are there any other questions? Things. Oh my gosh, I left all this time for questions, thinking there be questions. Actually, I didn't leave much time. We actually almost right on time. I think one of the things ohh yeah, I think one of the things that is really hard for for

us who work in assistive technology. I know, I know. I've talked to to Tyler and chat about this. I talked to John about this. Ooh, that's a good question, Tiffany. I will get to that. I think one of the biggest things that we've realized in all the years that we've had the adaptive controller out and and then you know the adaptive accessories for PC and other other things that we've put out is that, umm, it's the awareness of what of what is available is of one of the biggest challenges in ass

istive technology. If you think about assistive technology abandonment and you think about and, I don't just mean awareness is into, as in just finding the assistive technology. We ask people sometimes to really change their mental model of how they interact with computers. In very, you know, challenging ways. So it is understandable to me that when someone now at the time, it wasn't when we were first starting, but it's understandable to me now to see someone take a game controller and then lik

e kind of mash it against their face and use it because in their brain, that's how they think about the adaptation. They're not thinking about, like, analyzing their own movement. They're thinking about how do they get to what's the minimum distance between where they're at now and where they used to be is in terms of movement. If they were someone who has has a kind of an accident and so that awareness is really really tricky because like when the adaptive controller came out, we met people wit

h cerebral palsy who were like, I'd never even thought video games was a possibility. So not only did we have to show them that video games was a possibility, we had to show them people like them so that they could just get their head around the fact that there was even possible for them to play games, because if the world tells you that doing this is playing video games and then you can't do this, then you think you don't play video games. So yeah. So I'm gonna add Certis Tiffany's question. Th

ank you, Tiffany. What are you passionate about working on right now? You know, I'm still. I'm still super into to hardware input and human computer interaction. I do think that we we definitely everything that we've learned with the adaptive controller and the adaptive accessories, the way that we think about input is that we think about multimodal input kind of all the time. Umm, we think about how. How people should be able to use any type of input they want interchangeably and So what I mean

by that is like on Windows you can use mouse and keyboard. There are two different input modalities. You use them both together at the same time all the time, right? No one thinks twice about it. But why not like gaze and voice or keyboard and you know, gesture like there are all kinds of input that we could do, keyboard and switch voice and switch. Right. There's all kinds of stuff that we could do that we just we just need to get people to think about multimodal input. And I mean it's tricky

problem. I mean, there's lots of people tackling it. I think what's wild is that like when we launched Xbox One like more than 10 years ago, more than a decade ago. Umm, we had connect on the device and you could use voice or gesture or controller at any point in a workflow on the on the home screen. And you know, that was something that was unique at the time that I don't really know if people have really replicated since. I mean, you can use multimodal input on lots of devices, but can you sea

mlessly transition between one and the other at any point in the flow? I think that's that's a little bit different. So yeah, that's what I'm thinking about right now. What are the input options you wish you had? I always wish Jake that I had more joysticks. I always wish that I had more joysticks. Can never have enough joysticks. I think the perfect example of joysticks in many ways too, and almost the awareness problem in this not awareness problem. But there's also this thing that where peopl

e for people want to, you know, where people want to engage with games in ways that are similar to other people. So what I mean by that is let's say like we had brain interfaces tomorrow and you could play any game you want. You don't have to touch anything and everyone's on this. You know, the reality is, is people like to play video games like like to touch things. They like to move things right, like when people, when we show people this button. Let's say there's someone with muscular dystrop

hy. Sorry this joystick, this touch base joystick, they can use it really easy because there's no resistance. It's just their finger, but they tell us they keep wanting a lighter joystick because joysticks are gaming, so they tell us like, but I wanna joystick. Well, why do you want joystick? Well, joysticks are gaming and and you know you can't really argue with that, but like you're sitting there going but you you don't have the strength like the the the spring move a joystick back to zero mig

ht be stronger than what the strength that you have. So, but you know, everyone keeps wanting a lighter joystick. So yeah, joysticks for me is is kind of constant. It's always joysticks. I always wish I had more joysticks. Umm, have there been people you wish to help that you don't yet have controllers for? That's a really good question. I don't know. That's a really good question. I mean, you know, I hear Bob, who's on the I think Bob still on the call. I think Bob might show he's gonna. It mig

ht be doing some assistive technology stuff from their own collection now, and they have a they have a way to hook up eye gaze to an adaptive controller. So I'm excited to kind of see that and see what that goes. Bobby's asking about the Zach 2.0. I don't work in Xbox, so I don't even know it could be happening. Umm. I mean, I'd probably know, but I don't know. Do you find that people want designs to be unobtrusive and not highlight the users differences? Yeah, stigmas, really. A really wonderfu

l thing to think about. I will say that with the adaptive controller, when we've pivoted from our original form, which was an add-on for a regular controller, to this bespoke device, we did get some feedback from the Cerebral Palsy Foundation. Richard Ellenson basically like sat me down for 45 minutes and told me how I was wrong and it was really good feedback and it was all about stigma. It was all about the fact that, you know, there there's definitely something to having the same device that

everyone else has in a more accessible way. So I don't, you know, we struggle with this a lot with stigma a lot. I mean, that being said, you know, we really thought about it a lot. We made a device that felt like a consumer product and not like a medical product to avoid that kind of stigma, but. But yeah, I think about stigma a lot. I mean, I also think about changing stigma, right? I mean, we talk about stigma in here and industrial design all the time. You know, glasses were once stigmatizin

g. Now no one's stigmatized over glasses, but they're still stigmatized over hearing aids and and other canes and things like that. So there is certainly a a thing in culture about destigmatizing assistive technology as a as a really interesting topic for industrial design. I mean, we do our best, but you know. You know, if you, if you if you ask me. I'm. I'm just like you know. Anyways, I'm just like everyone else in assistive technology to be honest, in the sense of if you tell me to prioritiz

e features versus simplicity versus stigmatization, I'm gonna give you features every time because I never know. I never, you know. I I I I always know who I'm not including when I don't, when I don't have the features. Umm but yeah, I don't know. It's not that I don't think about simplicity or stigma stigma, but it it is one of those things. This is a sentimental attachment from Harvard defines gaming. Yep. Yeah. Any comments? That was a great question about rapid fire. There was a great questi

on. Any comments about how to create the modded functions with switches like rapid fire? That's some clients might need. OK. Yes, it is a great question and it is something that uh, that I basically fight with my peers here in Microsoft about. So I show up in meetings and say I want macros in game controllers. I want I want rapid fire. I want those types of things and then I have a contingent of my peers that go that all sounds like cheating and I go, but I'm doing it for people with disabilitie

s. They need it. It's not cheating, and that's where the discussion happens, right? And I don't always win. I lose. Sometimes I lose quite often to be honest, but we still keep fighting. Because cheating is one of those things in gaming. I I just, I call it a ghost story. You know, like all you have to do in a in a, in a, in a meeting around gaming is mentioned cheating and everyone like basically like it's like mentioning security in like a Windows meeting. It's like everyone. Everyone backs of

f all of a sudden, you know. But I do think as a gaming community, we need to define what shooting is. That's why with the Microsoft Adaptive accessories, which I'll do in an upcoming version of these for which are for PC, we do we not only do macros, we do crazy macros because you can do lots of things on PCs that you can't that would not be cool on console 646640 K and eight buttons are all you need. Sorry, John. Input is active. Sorry, just catching up on questions. Yeah, I mean. I think. I t

hink I think rapid fire is important. I think there are. There are ways to kind of deal with it too though. I mean there there are tons of devices that do it. Umm, I just I you know, I think the other part that I just to be honest with like kind of everyone you know, I'm gonna be posting this publicly like you know my my team at my the the the team has a lot of of different things that they have to weigh. So we do our best to to encourage like them to, to intentionally include people with disabi

lities and the things that we make. But there are certain things that were they're just where they just don't want to go because they're worried about other parts of their, their work and their business and all that and you know, umm, I want them to make adaptive controller, so I have to be a good partner. You know, I can't always just sort of show up and and, you know, yell at them and things like that. So you know, I have to be a good partner. Ohh ha, there could be cases where games like Fort

nite Anticheat might misinterpret the macros. Yeah. So you're absolutely right, Dave. David, there's lots of things where there's lots of algorithmic ways to determine cheating. And and we relied we we also use those as well. Umm, I mean the one thing when the adaptive controller came out, people were like can I plug a mouse in there? And I'm like, no, you cannot. You cannot plug a mouse in the adaptive controller because that was something that you know that's. That's basically the the big thin

g that we're all trying to avoid. That was really insightful. We have encountered similar problems, but still fighting things for sharing. No, thank you. Yeah. Well, I hope this was useful. I've gone over time. I thought I was gonna I I was worried that I was. I was gonna be super quick, but I got to nerd out on equipment with everybody today, which is fun. I don't typically get to do that. I don't keep all this stuff out like I have it today. You know, I spent like a couple hours, like laying o

ut, you know, put taking everything out of the cupboards. So yeah, thanks everybody. Thanks for coming. I I can stick around if anyone wants to, to still ask questions, but yeah.