About My Disabilities

Absolutely! And I’m so glad you asked.

One of the reasons that I’m interested in running this blog, and doing the reviews that I do, is that in doing these reviews I am able to give one of two possibly unique perspectives. Either the perspective of someone who is experiencing the games I review with the issues that I have, or the perspective of someone who is watching the game. Jay has noticed that I pick things up that he sometimes overlooks since I’m not trying to do all the physical aspects of a game if I’m watching him.

I was born with cerebral palsy. I have three semi-paralyzed fingers on my right hand (they are not capable of independent motion) and the pointer finger and thumb on my right hand can be clumsy. I also cannot properly rotate my right wrist, which is why I was unable to properly control a Wii Mote or Nunchuk in that hand, and why I can’t use it to control a mouse. (Fortunately, I am left handed, so the paralysis being in my right hand isn’t a problem in that sense.)

I am legally blind. I can ‘see’, but small print or hidden objects can be a pain, my eye hand coordination is not always ideal, QTEs are the bane of my existence, and I have an almost inverted sense of direction. My depth perception can also be kinda wonky, which can make some more challenging platformers get pretty tricky for me.

Lastly, I wss diagnosed with early onset osteoarthritis at 32, which has made me need to take much better care of the joints in my wrists and fingers. For this reason, I don’t play nearly as many fighting games as I used to. Fortunately, unless I am directly having a flare up, most games are perfectly safe for me. But bending and curving of my fingers has definitely changed how a controller can feel to hold, and I am definitely not as flexible for some button presses (lookin’ at you there, Y plus right trigger or bumper on an Xbox controller) as they did when I was younger.

If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts about gaming with disabilities, here is an article I wrote for publisher and developers: 5 Things That Make Me More Likely To Buy Your Game.