A devoted dad is going viral after he shared his daughter’s reaction to his newly-designed adaptive Nintendo Switch controller which had been tailored specifically to her disability.
Since 9-year-old Ava Steel has hereditary spastic paraplegia, she has trouble with controlled motor function and speech. These symptoms make it particularly difficult for her to play video games the way her friends do—but that has all changed thanks to her father Rory Steel.
Steel, who has always been a self-admitted “tinkerer”, designed a custom arcade-style Nintendo controller that can hook up to an adaptive Microsoft Xbox controller.
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With dual joysticks and multiple, easily-accessible buttons, Steel bought all the parts for the contraption off of eBay for about $144 (£110).
Steel later posted an adorable Twitter video of his delighted daughter playing “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” with ease—and it has since been viewed more than one million times. It even garnered some feedback from Bryce Johnson, the founder of Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab and an inventor of the adaptive Xbox controller used in Steel’s device.
Although Steel says the controller’s final design is an ongoing effort, he soon plans to post DIY instructions for its assembly on the internet so other parents of disabled children can build one themselves.
Finished! Ava gives my homemade #accessibility controller V1.0 the thumbs up. She can play @Nintendo #BreathoftheWild on her #switch like her friends now. All thanks to @Microsoft 🙌 #adaptiveController #XAC @brycej @ArranDyslexia @shanselman pic.twitter.com/dOhGnUFZa0
— Rory Steel (@JerseyITGuy) January 19, 2020
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