Media Releases

U of T to host first ‘Accessibility Arcade’ video game lab for disabled players

April 24, 2014

TORONTO, ON – The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to will launch Canada’s first Game Acces­si­bil­i­ty Lab to research video game tech­nolo­gies for play­ers with dis­abil­i­ties.

The lab, also known as the ‘Acces­si­bil­i­ty Arcade’, will fea­ture the lat­est assis­tive tech­nolo­gies to enable dis­abled gamers to play today’s most pop­u­lar video games. The lab will be per­ma­nent­ly housed at the Sem­a­phore Research Clus­ter, part of the U of T’s iSchool (Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion).

The arcade will be built by the U.S. non-prof­it AbleGamers Foun­da­tion which is devot­ed to mak­ing and advo­cat­ing for games and tech­nolo­gies that are acces­si­ble to play­ers with dis­abil­i­ties.

WHO:
• Mark Bar­let, co-founder of AbleGamers Foun­da­tion
• Sara Grimes, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
• Ali­son Har­vey, Lec­tur­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter
• Sea­mus Ross, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Infor­ma­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
• Lar­ry Alford, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Chief Librar­i­an, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
• Tanya Lewis, Direc­tor of Acces­si­bil­i­ty Ser­vices, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

WHAT: Offi­cial launch cer­e­mo­ny fea­tur­ing video game tech­nol­o­gy designed for dis­abled play­ers.

WHERE: Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Main Floor of Robarts Library, Room 1150. (Map: https://goo.gl/maps/Rcrfx)

WHEN: Sat­ur­day, April 26. 11am for media and 11:30am for the pub­lic.

Please note: Space is lim­it­ed. Media can reg­is­ter for the event by 11am on April 26 by con­tact­ing amy.ratelle@utoronto.ca.

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 For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Amy Ratelle
Research Coor­di­na­tor, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
amy.ratelle@utoronto.ca