Making Pinball Accessible for Everyone

Man, it's hot out here, and a good time to hang out in an air-conditioned arcade. Who doesn't like playing some old-school pinball?

The only trouble is pinball isn't accessible to everyone. But at The Game Preserve, with locations in Webster near NASA and up in Spring, all of their pinball machines, about 100 in all, are playable either in the standard way or with a handheld adapter called the Adaptive Flipper Control. If you are a wheelchair user, have the use of only one hand, or have trouble standing, you can play pinball right alongside everyone else.

The Adaptive Flipper Control is about the size of a deck of cards and has two buttons. It plugs into the pinball machine and can be held in your hand or placed in your lap. Players can also continue to use the machine's standard flipper buttons.

The irony is that the inventor doesn't even consider himself a pinball player. James Austin is a technician who maintains the machines at The Game Preserve arcades. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and the Adaptive Flipper Control was born out of his necessity.

James Austin: I had a stroke, so I'm hemiplegic. I lost the use of my right side. I'm actually a repair person. I repair pinball and video game machines. I could repair them, but I needed some way to test them. I was sitting around my shop one day thinking, "How could I make it possible to play pinball one-handed?" That's what I came up with. That's the genesis of the device.

If I hadn't had a stroke, I probably never would have thought about it, to tell you the truth. I always say God gave me a stroke for a reason.

Reporter: Well, you're doing something with it.

James Austin: That's what I like to do. I didn't want to make it expensive because I wanted anybody to be able to afford it. I also didn't want it to be complicated to install. A 10-year-old could install it. That's how simple it is.

The Adaptive Flipper Control is also accessible in terms of price. The kit costs about $15 for the adapter and $20 for the controller itself, making it several times less expensive than many accessible gaming controllers on the market.

The best part is that once machines are fitted with adapters, the same $20 controller can be used on all of them. Austin says dozens of machines can be adapted for just a few hundred dollars.

Maybe because of all the adaptations he's made in his own life, Austin prides himself on the flexibility of the design. He's willing to customize it to suit a user's individual needs, whether that's operating it with the mouth or feet, or expanding it into a larger box with oversized buttons that can be pressed with knuckles or fists.

Austin says he can 3D-print customized controllers. One customer in Wisconsin underwent brain surgery that left half his body paralyzed, but with Austin's help he was able to adapt his pinball machines and continue playing.

Austin has even created a version that uses an aircraft-style joystick.

To him, it's all part of the fun.

James Austin: We were at a show in Chicago showing them off when we first built them. Kids would come up, pick up the controller, plug it into the machine, and play with it like a video game controller. They'd use each button with their thumbs.

I had a nine-year-old come up and play Ghostbusters. He picked it up, fired it up, and played it like a video game. He scored a huge number of points with it.

I asked him how he liked it, and he said, "I like this a lot better. It's more like a video game."

Reporter: So it makes pinball kind of a hybrid?

James Austin: Right. It's like a mix of old school and new school.

And for another benefit, if you're a beer drinker, you can actually play pinball and drink your beer at the same time.

People are using them lots of different ways. I primarily made it for one-handed players, but obviously it has a lot of other uses.

We had a guy come in one night who had lost part of his left arm in a lawnmower accident when he was a kid. He came in with his nine-year-old son, and they got to play pinball together.

Austin has been selling units to individuals and businesses in Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida and other locations across the country. He brought the controller to the national Pinball Expo in Chicago, where it received a positive reception.

James Austin: I'd like to see it become more ubiquitous around the United States and the world.

I spent 12-and-a-half years in the Air Force, and I've been trying to figure out how to get it into VA hospitals. If they had pinball machines in VA hospitals, veterans who have disabilities could play too.

James Austin will also be at the Houston Arcade Expo at The Game Preserve booth, where visitors can see the Adaptive Flipper Control in action and share ideas for future adaptations.

For more information, visit The Game Preserve website gamepreservehouston.com and select Adaptive Game Products.

For KPFT People's News, this is John Mohler reporting.

A pain in the neck: The odyssey for decent, comfortable IMAX ADA seats

Last week my friends and I went to the show. When the movie let out, the lobby was swamped with people. They were lined up everywhere. At five in the afternoon, on a Monday. It took a while to pick our way through to the exit.

All these folks had turned out to see two of summer’s biggest blockbusters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. Both are screening in IMAX. The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan encouraged viewers to catch his new movie in IMAX to get the full effect of his work. He’d worked with engineers to come up with better, lighter cameras allowed him to shoot his entire 3-hour feature film in IMAX format, which was about impossible to do before. Add to this that there are only 25 theater-screens in the country that can project in the ultimate experience, IMAX 70 millimeter, and the only one in Chicagoland, which is this theater we attended — so moviegoers are making the trek across the metro area and the state of Illinois and even from other states to this one theater, and to this one theater’s lobby. But here is one of history’s biggest stories, shot in a huge way by a huge director, so people are there in search of a unique, unforgettable experience.

How my neck felt after my first IMAX movie.

Unless you’re a wheelchair user, that is. Because if you are, then this could be an unforgettable experience for how utterly disappointing it was. In some IMAX theaters, the patrons who use wheelchairs were an afterthought, which was my own and only IMAX experience, long ago. These are the IMAX theaters where the ADA seats are right in front of the towering screen, or like mine, crammed in at one side or the other. I remember less about the movie shown and more about my neck craning the entire time. In a situation like that you are not even able to take in the whole picture, and you’re literally not in any position to enjoy it. The poor seating made the movie uncomfortable and uninteresting, as in I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Still, if possible I really wanted to see this flick with the special IMAX sauce, so at the website I checked the seating diagram. I wasn’t confident about what I was seeing. The thing to do at this point would be to call the manager and arrange a look-see before buying tickets. But no, I’m jumping through extra hoops every day of the week because that’s what we’ve got to do, right, but enough already. It’s show time and I’m damned hooped out. So, I reserved for the standard format screening with guaranteed midhouse ADA seating for me.

If it helps anyone out there, Copilot AI suggested we might find better ADA seating at IMAX theaters built in 2015 or later, and at theaters advertising “IMAX with laser,” both of which offer more mindful, more equitable design. It sounds like the earlier generation of theaters may be the spine-bending offenders. Useful information to know, if Nolan’s IMAX cameras take off in the industry, in search of The Odyssey-like box office riches.

In the end, it didn’t matter what format I chose, I was disappointed in The Odyssey. The Nolan movies I’ve seen I liked, ranging from adrenaline-stoking thrill-rides to spine-tingling weirdness. This one had none of those qualities. To me, it was just crap storytelling: boring, confusing and ponderous. Which is a shame because Homer was literally a storyteller, not a writer. He recited stories to others, like a bard, and a disabled bard at that.

 

A Taste of the Future? Reviewing Augmental’s MouthPad^ Wearable Controller

Through a combination of frugality and needs, I long ago landed on a combination of speech recognition and a mouthstick to do my writing and editorial work. But as a C4 quadriplegic with multiple sclerosis, and growing older, my seating and positioning are growing more precarious. I wanted options that might free me from some of the physical contortions and frustrations that have long been part of my work setup. After using the same computer accessibility setup for about 30 years, I recently decided it was time for a change.

Having read about Augmental’s MouthPad^, a custom-made wearable controller that looks and fits like a dental retainer, I was excited to try it out. I expected a novel tool that was somewhat of an upgrade from the speech-driven mousegrid/voice control navigation I’ve been using half my life. What I got was a genuinely exciting experience and an instrument I believe I’ll continue to master and explore with. 

Multitasking with my MouthPad

The MouthPad^ has an embedded touchpad that you use with your tongue, but the device also recognizes other easy inputs like head motions, sip and puff, and bites. Through Bluetooth and an accompanying app, it can control devices that run more recent versions of Windows, iOS and MacOS. It helps control Android devices too, in a more limited way.

I found the device to be extremely mobile, discreet ("Ah, sweet privacy!" says the decades-long speech recognition user), and versatile with its many features. Funding and product-life are two concerns, but vocational rehab often does fund the device and there are other financial sources available.

It gives me better control of my device, like when a phone call comes in while I'm working, I'm instantly able to pause work, switch off speech recognition and answer the call long before it goes to voicemail. A big improvement for me.

Finally, it is fast. Many of my most basic activities, like editing; navigating between files and programs; or working my way around websites, go much quicker. To me, that's not just a convenience. So much of my disabled life is about losing time: the waiting, the slower pace, the obstacles, the need to do things more than once. When I can move quickly, it’s exhilarating, it's empowering. The MouthPad^ lets me to do this.

Check out my full review in New Mobility for details. The future for disability users tastes spicy, and I like spicy.

Disability rights under Section 504 and ADA are under serious attack

tl,dr: Do you like ramps and curb cutouts? How about accessible voting, and staying out of nursing homes? Then ASAP go to https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6 and act.

REV UP Texas rocking the graphics. FYI TX AG Paxton is running for U.S. Senate.

Image description: A repurposed photograph of a patch with dark blue, beige, and dark red horizontal stripes. There's a white star at the top and a white outline of the state of Texas at the bottom. The text over the graphic reads, "Don't Mess With 504 Call Paxton"

Now that the Supreme Court has done the unthinkable and cut out the heart of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 -- the prize achievement of a Civil Rights movement admired around the world -- what could possibly be next? The Civil Rights Act stood intact for over 60 years, for two-to-three generations during which we've made great but imperfect progress. 

This same court has also struck down Roe v. Wade, which was settled law also lasting for a couple of generations, a 50-year-old reproductive rights law. So now Blacks and women have lost personal rights.

Now what about the Americans With Disabilities Act? Look at all the change that has happened throughout the country because of this law that has been around for almost two generations. They wouldn't touch that, would they? After all, it's been on the books for 36 years, right? But 36 years is less than 50 years and 60 years. So don't think people with disabilities couldn't face the same bitter consequences. In fact, that process is already under way.

The attorneys general from 17 states objected to Biden administration updates of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which since 1977 has opened access to government buildings and programs and eventually led to the ADA. You may remember it from the documentary Crip Camp, the part when Judy Heumann and scores of activists occupied the San Francisco Federal Building in order to get enforcement of Section 504. 

Among the Biden updates were provisions extending accessibility to those with gender dysphoria, which is a medically recognized impairment but still one that the 17 states objected to. They went further, too, and claimed that 504 itself is invalid. You'll get a way better understanding of this from https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6 

The good news is that nine of these states have since dropped out of the suit. They did this not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because disabled folks and their allies sounded off on their state governments and pressured them to drop out. Eight states remain: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas. If you live in one of those states, it's time to make phone calls, visits, or write newspapers or any other contacts you have.

Image description: Gray map of USA with the following states red: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and Texas.

Specifically the states argue that the Olmstead provisions -- that disabled people must live in their own homes and communities instead of nursing homes -- are something that the federal government has no right to impose on states. They argue this despite people's homes offering a better, healthier, more accessible quality of life that is preferred by disabled people, and the fact that living at home with attendant care is far more affordable to the individual and the state, than nursing homes.

What is most dangerous is that, by bringing this case, these states may eventually give a hostile U.S. appeals court or the Supreme Court their opportunity to tear into key portions of Section 504, which may later be used to knock down the ADA.

The states must file their final papers in the case on July 7, 2026. .If you live in one of these states, it is important to contact your attorney general, governor, legislative reps, and media outlets ASAP. Tell them about your situation and preferences, and maybe include some of the points above. I'm including the link to DREDF, experts in the case who provide contact info and talking points. https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6

Update this week: South Dakota just dropped out of the case! Indiana did before that. Your pressure is working!