This was an excellent article (I need to read it again LOL). @OP, sent you a PM.

@1 Sent you an email using the link at the bottom of the post, but the forum threw a 400 so not sure if it sent. In a nutshell, I'm wondering if you were the game accessibility consultant mentioned in the article? Guessing so, unless someone shares your name and you happened to link an article about them.

I've been curious about game accessibility consulting for a while. I wrote the Spiel screen reader for Android back in the day, and am currently building a screen reader for an open source game engine. So I'd say I probably have decent chops for taking inaccessible or less accessible clusterfucks and making them usable. But I have no idea where to even begin approaching potential game accessibility clients, and I'd love to chat about it if you have the time and think you have something to offer.

Otherwise I might just post a separate thread, since I get the sense that there are several game accessibility consultant types lurking here.

Also, Ian Hamilton is probably the very same Ian Hamilton indeed, as he is also an accessibility consultant.

Hello there everyone, man this was an absolutely wonderful article, and I especially enjoyed your speech Ian. I have a question about the consultant end of things though. I'm going to come right out and say it. I haven't even got a full time job and have absolutely no prospects of getting one, since I live in such an area where I couldn't find any work locally, and the way they pay blind people, I would be spending most of, if not all of my paycheck on paying a driver to get me from home to my job, or a cab driver, and what I'd like to do is to become an accessibility tester for video and computer games. I'm signed up with the able gamers player panel but what I'd like to do is to talk to some of these game companies that we know of who are serious about including accessibility in their games for those of us who have absolutely no sight, and see if any of them would be willing to hire me as an accessibility tester. I've tested web sites for accessibility or lack of it in my previous job working from home, and I'd like to work from home if possible since I can't just up and move to a new location because of my circumstances being what they are. Video and computer gaming is my main passion and has been since the age of 4 years old, and I'm hearing about this kind of news in accessibility and I would give anything to be involved and make my voice heard. Just like the rest of you, I dream of the day when we'll all be able to sit down in front of a video game console or a computer and play video and computer games right alongside our sighted counterparts. I've read it on here and I agree, we're a ways off from that happening, but I'd like to be involved in this process if I can at all. So Ianhamilton or Sightless, any sort of help at all you can give me on how I can be involved or contact some of these game companies that are doing accessibility so that I can help them play test their products and make suggestions for accessibility features, please let me know. Have a wonderful day to all of you and this is so exciting.

@9: [Link]

@10 thank you!

Hi there Mr. Hamilton, I'm in Virginia in the us, and I don't know of any game developers here, and I'm not exactly sure just how accessible twitch is to jaws. Hmm, guess I'll have to just wait and watch this unfold and when the able gamers panel puts up an opportunity, do my best to take part in it, although they've been rather quiet honestly. Thank you very much for your input.

@15
It might depend on what part of ND your in, there's quite a few around, though another way to find similar types would be to hit up some local hacker spaces as well. There's a listing [here] of 5 companies:

There also seems to be a gamedev collective mentioned [here] in Fargo going by, Replay Games? Or Fargo Game Makers? Not sure which, they seem to meet up once a month in the basement of the Exchange District in Downtown Fargo. There's also a list of hackerspaces [here]:

The minot Makers listing [here] mentions they meet every thursday at 7:00 in the executive board room at the sleep inn hotel.

@14
There's quite a few gamedev companies in Richmond Virginia, around 9 as listed [here]:

There's another list of 15 companies [here]:

Another list [here] on the gamedev map with:

There's a Student Game Developers group at the University of Virginia [here], a Unity meetup group [here] with 226 members, and around 18 hackerspaces around listed [here] in Alexandria, Blacksburg, Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, Haymarket, Locust Grove, Lynchburg, Norfolk, Portsmouth, reston, Richmont, Roanoke/Salem, and Winchester.

CORRECTION: I seem to have confused West Virginia with Virgina. I've added a few more relevant links for Virginia, and will keep the previous West Virginia links below.

Magurp244? thanks a whole heck of a lot good buddy, what you did for Ethon and I is exactly the kind of help I was looking for. Will I be able to be a payed work from home play tester? no probably not, but at least now I'll be able to hopefully get my voice heard by some folks and help them to learn that totally blind video and computer gaming is actually a thing, and I'm going to point them right to this community so that they can get all manner of help and feedback on how to make their products fully playable by the blind. I knew you guys would come through for me so thanks so much. Have a wonderful day to all of you where ever you are.

Hi.

Well, in the part of Germany where i live we have Egosoft, the company behind the x line of games, if I look on google maps, their HQ is about an hour away.

greetings Moritz.

@21
If you can provide the specific part of the US your in, I can pull up any data on local developers and hackerspaces. Same with anyone else whose interested.

@20
Hmm... You know, I recall meeting a German exchange student not to long ago at a local hackerspace. He talked quite abit about a huge crazy hacker party that goes on every few years, I think it was the [Chaos Communication Congress]? Which is run by the [Chaos Computer Club], might be worth checking out.

@23
Good lord, there's alot... Start off with the [Georgia Game Developers Association] which has a number of companies listed as members, and a huge list of over 134 local developer companies [here]. There's also an Atlanta, GA. Game Developer Meetup Group [here] with 1219 members that meets every month. A listing of 11 companies [here], including:

Also a listing [here] that mentions:

There's also a few videos [here] from Hi-Rez Studios on how to break into the gaming industry in Georgia. There's also about 30 hits [here] on the GameDev Map, a few seem to be from the country of Georgia, but there's quite a few not found on the GGDA big list:

Whew... Now, there's a listing of 19 hackerspaces [here], including:

There's also a listing of libraries with Makerspaces in Georgia [here] found in Athens, Bartram, Catoosa, Chattooga, Chestatee, Coastal Plain, Cobb County, Conyers-Rockdale, De Soto Trail, Greater Clarks Hill, Gwinnett County Public Library, Hall County, Lake Blackshear, Lee County, Northwest Georgia, Ocmulgee, Okefenokee, Piedmont, Sequoyah, Southwest Georgia, West Georgia, and Worth County. Be advised though, library Makerspaces may not be as populated with dev types as Hackerspaces.