reclining woman with button board at feet and laptray with game controllers

Bringing Max’s hands into play

Here’s a stick-swap with a difference! Our specialist assessment team have helped foot-control expert Max to discover just the right combination of equipment and positioning for controlling joysticks with her hands as well as her feet. Max’s cerebral palsy makes using a standard controller with her hands tricky, but her flying feet had enabled her…

Two images of seated man using an adapted gaming controller

“I’m able to play so much more!”

We couldn’t be more thankful for your all your support and generosity, and THIS is the kind of life-changing impact it’s making for so many people around the world. Meet Oliver. He has Tourette’s syndrome and his physical tics making gaming very challenging: holding a gamepad is painful and he often presses the wrong buttons…

Smiling man holding award

SpecialEffect win Ukie Diversity and Inclusion Award

We were delighted and humbled to receive the Diversity and Inclusion Award at the 2024 Ukie Video Game Awards in Birmingham on Thursday 7 March. The award recognises a UK organisation or individual working within the UK games industry that encouraged meaningful diversity and inclusion within the games industry in 2023, and the shortlist included…

smiling man waving hands at the camera

When UpIsNotJump visited SpecialEffect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0J9PG57sak For GameBlast24, we were visited by a wonderful new friend of the charity, UpIsNotJump (Matt), his wife Emma and videographer Milo, to film a video all about SpecialEffect’s work into making gaming more accessible for physically disabled gamers. An entire day’s filming full of accessible games, cake, ridiculously strong coffee and stories resulted in…

Man showing racing car to a robot

Lucinda’s eye-controlled Silverstone tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4nxWRnFEpY SpecialEffect Ambassador Lucinda Ritchie was a guest at the Silverstone Museum in December for a very special tour of its legendary motor racing memorabilia. Car-mad Lucinda toured the museum from her own living room more than one hundred miles away using a self-driving, two-wheeled videoconferencing robot, which SpecialEffect has adapted so that it can…

Close up of smiling young man alongside Thank You text

One Special Day raises £500k for SpecialEffect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1IVUU88wh4 Over 90 games industry partners united to raise over £500,000 for gamers’ charity SpecialEffect through their flagship One Special Day campaign in October. The charity is indebted to the many games industry companies from across the world who came together to support their life-changing work. Donations from the event on the weekend of 6-8…