Accessible Gaming Research Travels to Vienna
Game controllers aren’t just devices for play—they can be gateways to inclusion or barriers that keep people out. That perspective shaped the work of Wayne Reynolds, a student in the Emerging Media MA/MPS program, who presented his paper “Gaming with the Xbox Adaptive Controller” at the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2025 conference, held at the University of Vienna in Austria’s capital and at the University of Technology in Graz, Austria’s second-largest city. His workshop invited participants to experiment with the controller, originally created for players with motor disabilities, as a way to spark conversation about how design choices expand or restrict access to gaming.
By putting the Xbox Adaptive Controller directly into participants’ hands, Reynolds transformed a piece of hardware into a springboard for reflection on accessibility and equity. The session highlighted how tools designed for inclusion also expose the limits of traditional approaches to gameplay and invite broader conversations about the future of accessible design.
His presentation embodied the FDG 2025 theme, “Accessible Worlds, United Through Play,” demonstrating how scholarship and practice together can inspire more inclusive approaches to both game design and the communities that form around play.
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