Ready Player One

[Music]
COURTNEY WILLIAMS, PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: From KVMR and in partnership with FREED, this is Disability Rap.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I feel like if it wasn't for my World of Warcraft friends, that I would feel isolated and sad. I feel like it is one of the best places that I have ever made friends in a gaming community, specifically.

 

COURTNEY WILLIAMS: Today, we're talking all things gaming, from how to make play accessible to the community and how it extends beyond the screen.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I have a tendency to make very large, muscular women as my avatar because I'm such a small, non-muscular person. In real life, I'm frail, and in video games, I'm not. I'm tough.

 

COURTNEY WILLIAMS: That's all coming up on Disability Rap. Stay tuned.

 

[Music]

 

COURTNEY WILLIAMS: Welcome to Disability Rap. I'm Courtney Williams. Our regular hosts are still on vacation. While they're away, we're going to play. Today, we're talking gaming and accessibility with guest host Jason Rosales. Jason is an information and referral specialist at FREED and an avid gamer. He is hard to track down, as he will play almost any game out there. Disabled since 2016, Jason is a power wheelchair user living with muscular dystrophy.

 

Our guest today is Allie Williams, but you might know her as AllieWheelz, content creator and disability advocate, public speaker, and gamer from Oklahoma. Living with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 2, Allie has long used her platforms to challenge stereotypes, sharing her life as a disabled adult and fostering honest conversations about inclusion and representation.
She holds two college degrees and has performed on Broadway, giving her a unique perspective that combines advocacy, entertainment, and lived experience.
When it comes to gaming, she can usually be found playing World of Warcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Minecraft, Valheim, Rust, Enshrouded, and whatever new adventure catches her attention.
Whether creating content, advocating for disability rights, or gaming with her community, Allie's goal is to help build a more accessible and inclusive world, both online and off. Jason spoke with Allie last month.

 

JASON ROSALES, GUEST HOST: Allie, welcome to Disability Rap. It's great to have you on the show. Starting off with some icebreakers, always fun to ask. Why don't you tell us your favorite game or genre of game if there's specific kinds of games you like to play?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I am an avid World of Warcraft player. I actually had access to Alpha World of Warcraft like way back in 2003, so I got to play when it was brand new, while it was in its development stage. Then, of course, I played through beta. Then, when it came out in 2004, I was just like, "Wow, this game is so accessible." I had never played an MMORPG before.
I was a Counter-Strike player through and through. I was CAL-P on Method's girl team. I was a Method girl for a little while. I went to competitions, played some Counter-Strike stuff, but as soon as I started playing World of Warcraft, it caught all my attention. I'm talking 9, 10 hours a day. I was obsessed, obsessed. It's 2026, and I'm literally still playing. I'm playing at the highest caliber that you can, which is mythic rating. My guild right now is eight of nine, and I feel like I might be speaking a completely different language than a lot of other people right now. It's really cool that we have killed eight of the nine bosses that are available at the highest level of play in World of Warcraft.

 

ROSALES: Right on. I'll have to check in with a friend of mine because he adores World of Warcraft. I've got to say, though, I have tried about six or seven times to get into it, and I just can't quite wrap my finger around it. Maybe I had to be pre-alpha. Maybe I had to get it, but considering-- oh man, what did you say? 2003. I would have been eight. [laughs]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Are you making me feel really old right now?

 

ROSALES: Not intentionally. [laughs]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I know. I think I was 23. Wait. 2003. I was 22, 23 at that point.

 

ROSALES: It must add-- Who's to say? I guess my friend is about the same age as I am, so maybe I just didn't get to do PC gaming much.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I did play a little bit of League of Legends. I do like tower defense games there. A little bit of fun, but I'm a World of Warcraft fan, and it's not just MMORPGs. It's Blizzard specifically, and it is because of their accessibility.

 

ROSALES: Right on. I'll pop in here and there for Diablo. I've been liking that. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me. Blizzard-wise, I had a big Overwatch point of time in my life. What else has the Blizzard done?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: StarCraft, their biggest game ever.

 

ROSALES: I didn't play StarCraft. See that?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Oh my gosh.

 

ROSALES: Again, maybe an age thing.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I definitely think it's probably an age thing for sure because most of these games came out when I was my mid-20s. Like you said, you were a baby.

 

ROSALES: On the topic, saying you play a lot of World of Warcraft, and you mentioned a few times a lot of accessibility of settings and stuff, is there any chance you could go into detail on what those are, how you set up your setup?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: For a lot of games that just pop up or whatever that you can play, there's not a lot of being able to change your buttons. A lot of things are just static, or they have 40 different buttons to do, or you have to have a modifier to use a button. For me, I play with basically my thumb and my pointer finger on each hand, on both hands. On my right hand, I actually have my own little special keyboard that is just the number pad with the arrow keys. I put my thumb on the left arrow key, my first finger on the upper key, then my right finger, or my middle finger, on the right button. Then I use my knuckle on my pinky on the zero Insert button to jump.

 

I don't have a keyboard at all on my computer. There is no keyboard. It's just the side half of the keyboard, just the number pad with the arrow keys. Because of that, I use a left-handed mouse, and I use a left-handed Naga, which has 12 extra buttons on it. Blizzard's UI basically is 12 buttons with a modifier to get to the next one, but everything is clickable or movable. Because I can modify them in the game, I don't have to modify them outside of the game and have a certain-- what is it called? Profile for each game that I play. I like the fact I can just log into Blizzard and just change the buttons where I need them to.

 

That has been with every game that I've played with Blizzard is easily modifiable things, not with a lot of having to press Alt. Because I don't have an Alt key, because I only have the arrow keys and over. I don't have an Alt key. I can't reach any other buttons with my hands because my hand really doesn't work at all. It barely pushes the keys. I'm sure a lot of people with neuromuscular disease understand what I mean by I can't really push buttons or move my fingers. My fingers are on top of the keys, and I have to flex to push the key down.

 

Not having to have a certain modifier to press more buttons is really helpful for me. Again, being able to just modify those keys easily in-game and not have to do an hour and a half of setup just to play a game, and then realize I'm halfway through the game and go, "Oh, I need that button. I can't use that button. This game is worthless." There have been so many Steam games that I have bought, played for 15 minutes, and gone, "This is absolutely ridiculous. I need 17,000 buttons that I don't have." Just because I don't have an Alt key. It's super accessible for me.

 

ROSALES: That was actually one of the reasons I initially gave up on World of Warcraft, actually, in a weird, and the other sense is because I also, as you mentioned, my dexterity in my fingers is not the best. I had a really hard time initially, not realizing that I could do the clicking and stuff. I had a really hard time pressing all the number keys to do all the skills initially.

 

PC gaming for me, for a really long time, was just, unless it was a super simple game, had just a couple of buttons, like Minecraft, I think, was the first big PC game I played. Unless it was something simple like that, I couldn't really do PC gaming, so I really stayed away from it. It actually wasn't until a few years later, with some of the friends that I made on another game that I play, which is a game called Destiny. A friend of mine bought me an item, it's called a Razer Tartarus. They're like a little
half keyboard with a little joystick, and it has done wonders for me for accessibility, on being able to get to different keys and stuff.
went forward, and I bought a Razer mouse because the software for Razer has this thing called hyper-shift, which lets you use one of the keys as a modifier to change the entire set of keys. I have that set on my mouse, so I can just press a mouse button, and then it shifts all the same buttons that I was using already into a whole different set of buttons for me. It's been really great for that, so I totally understand that plight of having buttons and everything be accessible.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: We agree that Razer basically is our accessibility because I love the Tartarus. Love, love, love. I also use, like I said, a Razer left-handed mouse that has the 12 buttons, so, yes, it's Razer that makes things accessible to us. That's cool.

 

ROSALES: It would seem so. Not that it's a product placement, but it seems like that seems to be the brand. I guess with that said, you mentioned the left-handed mouse, the specialized numpad and arrow key keyboard, is there any other tools that you use to help with anything gaming-wise?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I use the in-game keyboard or the on-screen keyboard from Windows and the Windows key + H to use voice-to-text to type in-game to my friends. There was a very long time that I had a bunch of macros set for WoW to push that says, "Hi, I'm disabled. I cannot type in the game. I'm not being rude. This is a macro." It would be stuff like, "Rez me, please. Cookies, please. Bread, please." All sorts of stuff.
I had 30 macros to click because I couldn't type in-game and, listen, I talk about accessibility, but I didn't know the Windows key + H thing was a thing until last year. Somebody told me, they were like, "Why don't you just use Windows key + H?" I was like, "Does that work?" They were like, "Yes, it does." Guess what? It does, so that opened up a lot of accessibility for me, too.

 

ROSALES: Actually, I heard you mentioning the on-screen keyboard when I was watching your Enshrouded livestream that you did because that was a game I played as well, and so I was curious to how you were going to have the time with, a good time or a bad time. I guess another thing I wanted to ask you is, as people with disabilities, I wanted to ask, Enshrouded is a game where you get to create your own character. You get to design them however you want.
Now, in a game like that where you get to create your own character, is it something close to you to want to create something like, for example, that looks like you? Do you tend to want to create a character that's outside of yourself, outside of you'd say the life that you live?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I have a tendency to make very large, muscular women as my avatar because I'm such a small, non-muscular person, so it makes me feel stronger and bigger and like, "Grr." You know? I feel powerful when I play those types of games because, in real life, I'm frail, and in video games, I'm not. I'm tough. For Enshrouded, I had a really good time finding the exact way I wanted my girl to look with all the-- I don't know. I really like Enshrouded a lot. It's hard to explain.

 

I played the game for like five minutes. I ended up getting my own server because I was like, "Yes. I'm playing this forever." Me and a couple of my friends we'd taken over a city and built it really big. I haven't even really quested in the game yet, so I haven't really even experienced the game. Because when you buy your own server, you can make it easy to play. You don't actually have to unlock things to use it when you do it that way. I guess it's a cheater server, but I don't care. It's a lot of fun to build, and have fun, and explore. I like to go big and muscular, just the opposite of what I am in real life.

 

ROSALES: I feel actually similar, I guess, in some senses. It's almost a feeling of getting to almost, it sounds weird, but just to live a different life, I suppose, if you want to consider it that way. I also tend to make my characters look as much like me as I can. Usually, what happens with my friends is we get a little hooked to play a survival craft game. Then we'll go in on it for a week or two, where we're playing 6 to 8 to 10 hours a day, and then we'll just be like, "Well, that's over. Let's move on."
I know Enshrouded is getting, I think, its official 1.0 update in September, I believe, and so we're probably going to pop in again for that. Usually, my tactic ends up being just run off in one direction until I find something cool, and so usually, while my friends are building the house that they want to make to look absolutely perfect, I come back, and I have the best winged suit in the game because I just went in one direction and just found it in some temple or something.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: That's super fun, yes. Donna, my caregiver, actually plays a lot of games with me, and that's what she does. We build things, and she's like, "I'm out of here. See you later. Bye."

 

ROSALES: In a similar sense of questions, do you feel a lack of representation with disabilities, just characters with disabilities in games? Because you mentioned as a character, you want a big buff person, but do you ever feel like it would be fun to have a character that's a little more like you?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: In World of Warcraft, this newest expansion, they have a disabled character who is missing her arm, and she has a shield strapped to her armor, so it's really cool that she only has one arm and she's super big and buff. We also have Khadgar, who uses a pink wheelchair, and everybody is like, "We want the pink wheelchair as a mount." It would be so cool. Yes, I do think that there is lack of representation of the disabled community in video games as a whole.

 

For World of Warcraft, I was thrilled. I literally screamed, "Hell yes," when she was presented to us. I literally screamed out loud because it was nice to see a strong, awesome character that was also disabled, who is leading the fight and was one of the brave people. Yes, there's definitely a lack of representation, and I would like to see it more. I don't know how that would actually be presented in a game, but I think we need more for sure.

 

ROSALES: Personally, sometimes I feel like I see disability in a game or I see whether it's sexism or whatever-- I'm also missing my words. Whatever hardship they want to portray, sometimes I see it in media and games as the selling point versus part of the story. I've seen lots of games that maybe try, and this might be crazy to say, but I've seen some games where they have a female protagonist, but I sometimes feel like they really try to sell the fact that it's a female protagonist and not so much sell that the story is really good, involving the person, involving the characters, involving everything around it.
Do you feel similar in some senses as far as disability goes, or same thing with women or, say, trans people in games? Do you feel like there are games where they are properly represented, or do you feel like we end up being in a world where things are just being more of a market tactic?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I definitely think that a lot of stories are always about people overcoming their disability and being great in spite of their disability or have come out of their disability stronger because it made them-- I feel like they play that trope way too much, other than just having a story and it being disabled. They don't really do that. They have to have the sad backstory to it and the resilience behind the, blah, blah, blah. Yes, 100%.

 

It's not just with disabilities, like you said, it's for sure sexism and ageism as well. All of that happens in stories, and I feel it's way overplayed, too, because it would be nice to just have a character and them be disabled. I feel that that's how the one-armed character, I cannot, for the life of me, think of her name right now, but the one-armed character in World of Warcraft, they didn't really mention the fact she lost her arm. It wasn't like, "She lost her arm and then she got this cool--" No, she just got hurt and then the next time we see her she has a cool shield, and she's still fighting. There wasn't a big backstory into her injury or anything like that. She was just still a badass.

 

ROSALES: Of course. I feel like, coming from Blizzard again, actually, is I feel like Overwatch tends to have a pretty good-- character has a certain personality, a certain whatever they might be, but then it's not necessarily something that's put as the forefront of their character. It's just a byproduct or just part of their quirks. It's just the part of who they are. I do like that in a game like Overwatch, where it just is part of them and not necessarily the part that has to be shown off.

 

In a similar sense or in a similar topic, are there games that you avoid or tend to avoid due to either lack of accessibility, or in a similar sense, maybe you don't love the way certain things are being pushed throughout the game? Maybe it's a genre you just don't play. I won't play a racing game to save my life.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: To be honest, I try all sorts of games. All sorts of games, I try them. The biggest part is, that first five minutes of me trying to set something up, if it's going to take me longer to set up a game than it is for me to play the tutorial, I'm not going to do it. I'm just not because that's too much time, too much effort. If I have to tab out, go to my Razer, hit a button, remodify it, save the profile, reopen the game, play a little bit, "Oh, I need this button," go back to my Razer, hit the button again.
If this keeps happening in literally like 15 minutes, I'm like, "No, this game is not worth my time." Because I just want to sit and play. I don't want to take the dang time to make a game accessible when the people making the game can literally just say, "Hey, yes, you can change this button by just the click in the game," without me having to tab out and make a new profile and fix the button. No, I feel like that seems a little pointless to me. Does that make sense? I don't want to take the time because I'd rather just be playing a video game.

 

ROSALES: Yes, that's totally understandable. I'll tell you what, it is very much a different perspective on something because I feel like I always just accepted that as is because I've got like 20 profiles on the Razer, [laughs] and I have it set up to-- I have the little link to game button where it'll switch to a certain profile as soon as it detects the game's opening up.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I do too.

 

ROSALES: For me, I have a dual monitor setup. When I started a new game up, my second monitor is the Razer software.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I do too.

 

ROSALES: It's just me, one at a time, going, "Okay, this button does this. I want it to be this button." [laughs]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: In my opinion, Enshrouded is worth it.

 

ROSALES: Survival games are always a big one.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I can do a lot of modifiers in the game, but there are some buttons that I have to have via my Razer. I guess it really depends on the first 15 minutes. If I'm like, "Oh, yes, this game is good," then yes, I'm going to take the time to make that profile and everything. I guess it really just depends on the game.

 

ROSALES: You said you use on screen keyboard sometimes as well. Is that tricky with certain games? Some games have like the bordered option, or borderless option, which lets you actually move the mouse away from the thing without closing it.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: The biggest issue is getting to the keyboard. If it's on the screen, it can only go so small. If it's on the screen, it's in the way of some of the game. It has to be on my second monitor. Some games won't let me tab out unless I hit a certain button. I have to hit a certain button tab out, and then do it. It's mm, ehh. Enshrouded does a little bit like that. I have to have Donna sometimes come over and press the Escape button for me because I can't reach it. If I modify the Escape button to any of my buttons, what am I going to do with other buttons that I need? Just for an Escape button. It's all about if the game is worth it or not.

 

ROSALES: Let's pose a fantasy question, then. If you could have something invented right now that would be, say, a disability type device that could help you, what does that perfect image look like to you? [chuckles]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Just for me to be able to push a button and say, "Press Escape, open, blah, blah, blah, hold Shift." Something that I could do with my voice, because that would be so much easier than everything else. I also don't want it to lag, because I want to be able to play action games. I want it immediate. I don't want that open-pause-listen stuff that a lot of voice to whatever kind of things have. They have that we're-listening pause, then they do it. I don't want that. I want literally just me push a button and say, "Press Escape," and then it'll press Escape, or hold Shift, and it'll hold Shift while I'm doing-- or let go of Shift. As soon as I let go of the button, it stops doing whatever function I said. That would be a dream.

 

ROSALES: That would be nice for sure. I feel like at least we're maybe getting there, maybe at some point, because I feel like we are getting pretty big as far as like voice technology and stuff goes. Like you said, it's going to be that little lag time between thinking and doing.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Those seconds matter in video games.

 

ROSALES: Yes, of course. Definitely. [chuckles] Any competitive game, I remember a time when people were saying you had to get a wired mouse, because it was the 0.1 millisecond difference between that and a wireless mouse.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I'm not going to lie to you, I still won't use a wireless mouse. I still won't for that reason. I'm a full wired girl. I'm a crazy person.

 

ROSALES: I got the wired too. I fell for it at one point. I said, "You know what? I'm going to go with that too." [chuckles] I guess, first, in a high-octane or a high-level world, maybe those point milliseconds matter. I definitely agree with you on that. Oh, one thing a friend of mine started using is I don't know if you've seen those keyboards that have the-- basically, you would put your finger in it, and then each range of motion for your finger is a different key. It's like up, finger up.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: My brother sent that to me. He was like, "You need this." I was like, "Sweetheart, I can't move my finger like that." I literally can't go forward-back like that. My finger's just going to sit in it, and I'm going to flex, and nothing's going to happen. My brother was super excited. He was like, "This might work for you." I was like, "I don't think so. No"

 

ROSALES: Give him points at least for getting excited about something. My friend also started using that, but I can't wrap my head around it.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: My brother actually is the whole reason why I'm into gaming. I would have never-- My brother's seven years younger than me. I lived in my own apartment. He came and visited, and I played silly online games, like I did a lot of solitaire, chess, and all those online Yahoo games. This makes me feel so old that I'm saying this by the way. Yahoo games and stuff, I played a lot.

 

My brother was like, "You should install Steam." He installed Steam, and then he installed Counter-Strike, and I played it with him. We started gaming together, and we had a really good time. If it wasn't for my brother installing that, I don't think I'd be such a hardcore gamer as I would now. When he gets excited about a product that he thinks would work for me, it makes me super happy because he's raising two little gamer boys at his own now. The fact that he still thinks of me and wants to improve my gaming because new products come out is really cool.

 

ROSALES: That is wonderful to hear. It's always lovely to get people who are thinking of you. Man, I feel like Steam is pretty recent because if I think of my first PC experiences, it's the Windows XP pinball. [laughs]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I played that so much in high school.

 

ROSALES: That's like my first experience. [laughs]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: In high school, I played that so much.

 

ROSALES: What was the other one? Oh, in middle school, Macs were a big thing because I assume at the time, maybe they were cheap to get for a school, for example, but they had a-- what was the name of that game?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: SimCity?

 

ROSALES: No, no, it was Bugdom. Do you remember? It was a game that came pre-installed. It was such an odd 3D-- I don't even know what to describe it as, but I remember because it was pre-installed, it was hard to take off the computers for kids at the time. Whenever we had free time, it was like we would load up Bugdom.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I grew up in Oklahoma and rural Oklahoma, so we probably didn't have a lot of that.

 

ROSALES: That's fair. You know what? That's fair. In the topic of gaming, in a game like WoW, for example, and you mentioned before with some of your macros and stuff, there is the world of socializing within gaming. There is, can you find friends? Can you meet people? Have you felt that you're able to do so, and have you felt any challenges in doing so with a disability?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I have the best story for you. The woman that I keep talking about, Donna, we met on World of Warcraft. She was the coolest person. We became such fast friends. She just happened to be from my home state. I was living in Colorado with my husband at the time. She was living here in Oklahoma. We became super-duper fast friends. When I visited my family, my husband and I went and saw Donna. We hung out. We stayed the weekend with her. We went to the Ren fair together. Donna came to Colorado. We had a good time. We went sightseeing and things.

 

We did that for two years, and then my husband decided he no longer wanted to be married to me, and he put me into a nursing home. Because I had no one to take care of me, the state agreed and put me into a nursing home. I was in there for seven days, and every day Donna said, "Can I come get you? Can I come get you? Can I come get you?" On the sixth day, I said, "Okay, come get me." On the seventh day, her brother and her drove from Oklahoma all the way to Colorado, 12 hours, picked me up. Literally, we left the nursing home at midnight. They broke me out at midnight. Took me all the way back to Oklahoma, and Donna has been taking care of me ever since. That was in 2014.

 

I would say it's very easy to make friends in World of Warcraft. I have met the best person on the planet, because she has continued to be the only reason why I can live independently. My family is aged out. My brother's raising a family. My sister lived in China at the time. I did not have a support system other than financially from my parents to help me move home and be stable until I could become an Oklahoma resident. Donna's brother let me live in his bedroom, while he lived in the guest room, because it was more accessible in his room than it was there. Her brother plays World of Warcraft. She plays World of Warcraft. Her nephew plays World of Warcraft. Their whole family has a big community in World of Warcraft.

 

Also, I have friends that live in Florida. When I went to Disney in July, we went and had dinner while we were in Florida. I've been playing with those people for 10 years. I've made really good, close friends. I have a friend from Canada who came to Oklahoma, brought his wife. They went to Rocklahoma. It's a big rock concert or whatever, but they came early and stayed with my brother, who also plays World of Warcraft. You know what I mean? We have a huge World of Warcraft community. I feel like if it wasn't for my World of Warcraft friends, that I would feel isolated and sad. I feel like it is one of the best places that I have ever made friends, in a gaming community specifically.
Yes, as a disabled person? No, it's not hard to make friends in WoW. I'm in, like I said, a really competitive guild, and they understand when I say, "I can't do this boss, my hands won't let me," but they still let me participate. They still bring me into things when they need someone. They also encourage me. Last night, they asked me if I could come in for a boss because somebody called out. I was like, "I don't know if I can do this boss." They were like, "Yes, you can. You can do it." I ended up in the top five DPS. I know I'm speaking foreign to y'all, but it's a good thing. Yes, that was a long-winded yes.

 

ROSALES: Aside from long-winded, it was probably the best answer we could have for that kind of question. In almost every sense of the word, that would be the dream. To meet wonderful people that will accept you and that will love you, and coincidentally that lived where you lived. That's, honestly, just the cherry on top of nothing else.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: It literally feels like God said, "Here you go."

 

ROSALES: Yes. I would say the majority, if not pretty much the entirety of the friends I have right now, are people that I met through-- not through WoW obviously, but I met through Destiny. It was a game that I was playing. Obviously, not quite nearly as touching as your story, [laughs] but they're all wonderful friends of mine. We try to meet up once every year, every other year, to do what we call our guys' vacation, basically. Usually, just involves them.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Oh, that's cool.

 

ROSALES: They'll fly down to here in our area because it's a little easier for me, because planes are scary.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Traveling is awful.

 

ROSALES: Traveling is awful. Planes are scary. I don't like heights. They'll always fly in, and we'll rent an Airbnb for a week. Then we'll just get to be guys, just hang out for a week, do whatever it is.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: That's so cool.

 

ROSALES: Yes, it's quite wonderful. Maybe if I can pull some pictures, I'll have to show you, but it's a wonderful time, and they've been wonderful friends. We all started-- when we met, it would have been our early 20s and stuff. Now we're in a world where we're all getting past 30. We've got two of our six friends with kids now. We got the other ones married or about to be married. It's wonderful how much time we've spent together and how much of our lives we've managed to share, regardless of the fact that we all live in different parts of the US, because we got friends as-- I live here in California. We're here in California. I have friends as close as the San Jose, San Diego area, and friends as far as Tennessee or Louisiana.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Do you guys use Discord?

 

ROSALES: Yes.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: As your meetup place? I feel like Discord has brought my community way more together because now we have-- there was always the voice chat for Ventrilo or TeamSpeak, but there was no real place to chat. When Discord came out, I feel like that has brought our community way closer because if you don't want to talk in voice, you don't have to. You can type, and you can type at any time. It could be 3:00 in the morning if you're a night owl, or 8:00 in the morning if you're a morning person. I think that has really helped my community develop and stay as close as we are.

 

ROSALES: Yes. For me specifically, it was, we all started on Destiny, which was on PlayStation. I mainly play on console. I do play PC, but sometimes I try to avoid it for long sessions just because it's hard on my legs. They get swollen and stuff, so I don't do super long sessions on PC. We all started on PlayStation. Our chats and stuff were on the PlayStation party, just the ability to group chat there. This is a wonderful thing in the sense of how friendship grows. We got to a point where, yes, we still wanted to hang out and stuff, but we weren't all playing the same thing at the same time.

 

We were like, "Sure, this guy's playing this, this guy's playing this," but really, we just wanted to hang out. Things like Discord did become a big help for things that because we could get on Discord. PlayStation now has Discord integration. Some people can be on PlayStation, playing whatever games they want to play. Other people can be on PC on Discord, doing whatever they want to do.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Oh, I love that.

 

ROSALES: Yes, and we can still just chat and stuff. Sometimes, like I said, we'll be playing completely different games, but we'll just be there to chat and have a good time. We'll meet up. Actually, date-wise, today is our what we call our Magic night. We play Magic: The Gathering online using a piece, or what's it called? Using Tabletop Simulator. Wonderful application.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I love Tabletop Simulator. Oh my gosh, yes. We used it for our D&D games.

 

ROSALES: Yes.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: That I used to be part of, and then COVID happened, and everybody stopped doing stuff.

 

ROSALES: Yes. In an accessibility sense, Tabletop Sim is also wonderful as far as just being able to-- because a lot of things have buttons, have keys that you can use to do them, but I think almost everything is available just through clicks and stuff as well. When we play Magic: The Gathering, we can right-click to flip a card, rotate a card, draw a card, all that. Yes, there's obviously key bindings, but it's nice that we can do it all just through the mouse.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Have you seen the gamer RockyNoHands?

 

ROSALES: I have not. What is it?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Oh my gosh. He is disabled, and he streams on Twitch. He does crazy first-person shooter stuff. He plays all with his mouth and his chin. It's crazy. You should check him out. He's amazing.

 

ROSALES: Oh, maybe I have seen a clip, because that does sound familiar. I don't think I've ever just heard the name, though, but I feel like I have seen that.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: It's RockyNoHands. He's great. He's on Twitch. Me watching him play, I'm like, "Dude is so good at this."

 

ROSALES: It is insane sometimes, because I feel like sometimes I see a video like that where I'm like, "This person might have maybe less range of motion than even I do." I'm just like, "This guy is blowing me out of the water. There's no way I could do that. There's no way." [chuckles]

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: It's really impressive how people set up their accessibility devices so they can play. It really is just incredibly cool to also talk to other gamers and figure out things that they've learned and what they could do to make their gaming easier. I wouldn't have even thought about just using the side keyboard without the long keyboard, because forever, I was using a long keyboard. Then my mouse would hit my keyboard because I'd turn to the right. Because that long keyboard was in the way, because if my arms are spread too far apart, I lose the, I don't know, gravity? Is that how I put it?

 

Basically, I wouldn't be able to push certain buttons because it was too far away from me.
Somebody was like, "Why don't you just get the little half keyboard?" I was like, "There are half keyboards? What do you mean?" Without other people telling me about their accessibility devices or what they do for how they play, I would still be using a regular mouse, clicking everything. A long keyboard, no modifiers, no voice-to-text things, no on-screen keyboard, without other disabled people talking to me about how they use their accessibility. It's all word of mouth.

 

ROSALES: Yes, and it's also wonderful to be able to-- and this is true both of accessibility, and with just things in general, I guess. It's nice when you're able to use an item that maybe exists for a different purpose and then able to make it work for something like that. Speaking on the Tartarus again, it has the little joystick on the side, but I believe the intention for that is to be, I think, in most cases, a replacement for the WASD. Is to be able to move with the joy key.

 

The way I set it up, though, is I have that as a replacement for my number keys, because it's much easier to hit my number keys with a joystick, like one, two, three, four, than it is to reach up to the number keys, which is in the third or fourth attempt of me trying. Wow. Did get me a whole lot farther than I did the first time, because I was able to hit those couple of buttons with the joypad and with the little hypershift button that I mentioned before. I'm able to do one, two, three, four, as it's four joypads. Then I can hold the button and make those same four, five, six, seven, eight. Then I have basically the full range of motion for the number keys, which is really nice.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Oh, that's great.

 

ROSALES: It's helped a lot. The best examples of where it helps is games like Enshrouded. Is being able to hit the different parts of my inventory quickly, and just be able to quick swap to them. Some survival craft games don't have that, like the scroll wheel to cycle through the inventory.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: At all, and it's nuts to me that they don't have that. That's what I mean. I don't know if it's really easy, to be honest. I'm not a game developer, I don't know, but it feels like it would be easy to just make it where you can click one button, scroll through something, and choose it. Instead of having to click 17 buttons to get to one thing.

 

ROSALES: Yes, definitely. If it's not an ease of difficult thing, at least I feel like it should be standardized. Let's say, even if it is difficult, that should still be a standard for your game in some senses. Especially if you're trying to compete, stay at a high level, from a marketing standpoint, try to compete with other games that are like it, you want to have, at the very least, all the features that they have.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Yes, and especially colorblindness accessibility. What is it? There's another one. Motion sick removal, all that kind of things, because there's a lot of games that I can't play just from motion sickness in its entirety. I was very surprised that once I turned all the motion sick accessibility things in Enshrouded on, where it would keep me from getting motion sick, it actually worked. Because that's a big reason why I don't play a lot of games either. Minecraft, can't play Minecraft. That game makes me puke.

 

ROSALES: Really? I guess speaking on that, so motion sickness obviously, but is it like motion blur, for example, is something I turn off in every game I can play because I hate it.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: The bounce, the blur, all of that, I turn all of it off, and in some games it works, in some games it doesn't. It worked in Valheim, it worked in Enshrouded. It does not work in Minecraft. What is the other one my brother plays with dinosaurs? What is that one?

 

ROSALES: Ark?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Yes. Ark: Survival. That one really made me sick, too. Ooh, Rust is another one that makes me sick. I love that game, but I can't play Rust either.

 

ROSALES: I think I had that one downloaded, and never actually started. Just the true curse of the Steam library.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Don't. It'll make you sick. It'll make you throw up. Don't do it.

 

ROSALES: That's the true hidden side of Steam? Is having the incredibly large Steam library of games you'll never play.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I have so many games. I have so, so many games. Donna does the $5 a month to that-- oh, dang, now I can't remember.

 

ROSALES: Hold on. I totally got this. I know this. Hold on. Humble Bundle, is that the one?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: Yes.

 

ROSALES: Yes. All right.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: She will just give me codes. She's like, "Here, install this. Here, install this. Here, install this." I have hundreds of games on my Steam account. My Steam account was the second week Steam came out. I have a six-digit Steam account, so everybody's jealous of me. I know you guys don't know what that means, but it's an old account.

 

ROSALES: We just recently got into the Steam library function, and so now my library just about tripled in size [chuckles] because I've got about six people's worth of Steam library now. Those Steam sales hit, and then it's too tempting to not pick up those $1 or $2 games.

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: They really do.

 

ROSALES: Terrific. Do you have any messages you want to push out into the world that you haven't already through your content creation? Any advice or words to other people with disabilities who might listen to our podcast or radio show, wherever they might catch it?

 

ALLIE WILLIAMS: I think if you have an idea, especially for video games, and you're disabled, reach out to the creators of those games. Email them, tell them your story and why you want to play their game, and the reason why you can't, so maybe they will make changes in any updates or when they develop their next game. I'm a big believer in also doing surveys for gaming, especially because you can find those all over the place and really push the idea that I am a disabled gamer. These are the needs that are being unmet for your video game for me to enjoy it as a disabled gamer. If you fix this, I would be able to play. It would mean a lot to me. I really want to support you, but I can't play a game.

 

Really push that. Advocate for yourself and your need and want to play a game. Most, especially indie game creators, really take that into heart, and they'll email you back. I've had several interviews with indie game creators on accessibility and what I would like as a disabled gamer. I think doing that would be really important.

 

COURTNEY WILLIAMS: That was Jason Rosales's interview with Allie Williams for our show about accessibility in gaming.

 

You can follow Allie across social media on all platforms @alliewheelz, A-L-L-I-E-W-H-E-E-L-Z.

 

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That does it for the show. Disability Rap is produced and edited by Carl Sigmond and me, Courtney Williams. You can go to our website, disabilityrap.org, to listen to past shows, read transcripts, and subscribe to the Disability Rap podcast. You can also subscribe to our podcast by searching Disability Rap on any of the major podcast platforms. We're brought to you by KVMR in partnership with FREED, and we're distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. From Jason Rosales and the team, I'm Courtney Williams with another edition of Disability Rap.

 

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