Microsoft has a history of taking accessibility options seriously for gaming controllers, and that trend continues with downloadable thumbstick toppers for Xbox controllers. Being straight from the source, the 3D models should fit as well as can be expected with a minimum of fiddling. Just make sure you select the right controller model, because they are each subtly different.

The toppers themselves come in different styles, and there’s a design to fit a variety of needs, from a thumb cradle to ones intended for more serious adaptations —  the perforated X-shaped topper, for instance, is meant to anchor a custom shape molded overtop it.

Microsoft does offer a remarkably hackable adaptive controller that is meant to make it easy to integrate with other hardware, and we’ve seen it used in some truly awesome ways. But it’s nice to see an easy way to extend and adapt normal thumbsticks on regular controllers, giving people even more options.

We love to see companies offer useful 3D models of their products, saving consumers from having to 3D scan or model things themselves. It’s a form of hacker-friendly hardware design, which we celebrate when we see it, while at the same time wishing it were more common.

Have you benefited from hacker-friendly design and made something useful that wouldn’t exist otherwise? Let us know on the tips line!

Lots of us have– thanks to repetative stress injuries– developed mobility issues that we have to work around when using computers. Maybe it’s a trackball instead of a mouse, or a split keyboard, or mechanical keys with very specific force requirements– but those are small potatoes compared to people with such severe movement issues such as quadriplegia who need to fall back on things like a sip-and-puff device to control the computer with their mouths. Commercial options of course come with absurd price tags, but a DIY option is a different story. [DanielYordanov]’s L.I.P.S project can be built for only a couple percent of what the big boys want, and it’s fully-open source.

So you might think a sip-and-puff device is a two-bit interface, only slightly more advanced than the morse terminal we featured earlier. While Morse code might be an option, these devices also act as pointers, as the lips and chin can be used to point the mouthpiece. Thus there are a few sensors needed: a hall-effect joystick for pointing info, and one or more pressure sensors to detect the breathing interface for ‘clicks’. [Daniel] has single and dual-sensor versions, creating at minimum a four-button mouse. In reality this hardware can distinguish long and short pulses, or combinations of breath to run some nice macros. With operating-system features like an on-screen keyboard, L.I.P.S. can provide someone with digital freedom– and at a tiny fraction of the cost of a ‘real’ medical device.

Despite the DIY nature, for the end-user control and config is easy enough thanks to a webserial portal run on the CH552 that you can preview on the official website. Code, ki-cad and STL files are all on his GitHub repository. If you’re interested in the design process, we’ve embedded his video about that below.

Thanks to [Daniel] for the tip! Do you know of a hack to make life better for someone, disabled or otherwise? Send us a tip!

From one-handed typing to open-source prosthesis, this sort quality-of-life hack may be the best thing about our community.

Some people are not merely satisfied with functionality, or even just good looks. These persnickety snoots (I am one of them) seek something elegant, a true marriage of form and function.

The main goal here was the perfect fusion of display and feel. I’m not sure that an FDM-printed, DIY macro pad can look any better than this one does. But looks are only half the story, of course. There’s also feel, and of course, functionality.

Yes those are (hot-swappable) mechanical key switches, and they are powered by an ESP32-S2. Drawn on the 3.5″ LCD are icons and text for each switch, which of course can be easily changed in the config app.

There’s a three-direction tact switch that’s used to switch between layout profiles, and I’m sure that even this is satisfying on the feel front. Does it get better than this? Besides maybe printing it in black. I ask Hackaday.

KeebDeck Keyboard Gets Two Thumbs Up

Did you make it to Supercon this year? If so, you hold a badge with a special keyboard — a custom job by Hackaday superfriend [Arturo182], aka Solder Party. Were you wondering about its backstory?

This 69-key alphanumeric silicone number has all the keys a hacker needs, plus a rainbow of extras that can be used for macros. According to [Arturo182], the keyboard has a tactile feel thanks to a snap dome sheet underneath the keys, and this makes it more comfortable for long thumb-typing sessions.

Be sure to check out the teasers at the bottom of the KeebDeck page, because there is some really exciting stuff. If you want to build one, GitHub is your friend, pal.

Thanks for the tip, [Wim Van Gool]!

The Centerfold: Controlled Chaos

Here’s what I know: That’s a Nulea m512 mouse, the keyboard is a KBD Craft Sachiel LEGO number, and that there is a Cidoo macro pad. Best of all, [Tardigradium] hand-painted the speakers. Neat-o!

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Gerda Typewriter Was One of Accessibility

Some of us (okay, I) would have thought that most accessibility inventions are fairly recent, say, from the 1960s onward. But consider the Gerda typewriter, which was created in 1919 to enable blind and one-armed victims of WWI to become employable typists.

According to the Antikey Chop, it’s quite possible that the German government helped grease the wheels of this project so that these soldiers would have a usable typewriter with which to get on with life.

Three versions of this index typewriter were produced: a two-handed Gerda, one with a Braille index, and one with an English index. All entered the market the same year, and were produced for a total of three years.

The Gerda’s typewheel was quite like Blickensderfer, and some even had the DHIATENSOR layout. More expensive than last week’s Clacker (75 Marks), the Gerdas for blind and sighted people with two hands cost 195 Marks, and the one-handed edition was 205 Marks. Some of the two-handed models had rectangular, wooden key-tops, and others had round, glass-topped keys.

Finally, Module-Based Keyboard Is a Sensory Nightmare

I’ve been an early adopter of keyboards in the past. This is usually to bring them to your attention, either before they’re released, or just as they’ve come out. And never have I ever had this poor of an experience.

Games Radar recently reviewed a surprisingly not-failed Kickstarter keyboard that actually shipped, the Naya Create. It may not look like it, but the Create is supposed to be a gaming keyboard. What it does look like is mouse-focused, or at least mouse-forward. And that’s the point of it. Evidently.

Those big modules are interchangeable, and there are four of them so far: the Touch (a trackpad), Track (a trackball that falls out reliably), the Tune (a dial), and the Float, which is designed for space mousing around. They sound cool enough, and might actually be the best part of this whole setup.

To fully illustrate my poit I hvemt’t corrected any of the typos experieved typim this semtemve with the Naya Create while tryig to maintain my usual speed.

But according to Games Radar, the Naya Create is so not worth the $850 (!) asking price. It has ‘mushy, low-profile switches’ and clammy caps, and although the reviewer complains about the non-staggered keys, y’all know that those are my preference at this point.

And apparently, by default, Backspace is mapped to the left side. What? Of course, you can remap any key, whenever the software decides to work. Whenever the reviewer tried to save changes, the software would say that the keyboard is disconnected. Wonderful.

Despite these shortcomings, Games Radar says the keyboard is rock-solid aluminium with good hinges. So there’s that. Just, you know, swap out the switches and keycaps, and wait for software updates, I guess.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.

Connecting an LED to a battery seems trivial. If you have any knowledge of using breadboards, knowing that red goes with red, and that black goes with black, it’s as easy as tying your shoes. Except there’s one problem: what if you can’t see the difference between red and black? [Tara] had a student who struggled with a problem just like this, so of course, they made a whole suite of breakout boards to the rescue!

Breadboards rely almost completely on the visual cues of rows, columns, and if the part is even in the hole correctly. [Tara] fixed these issues while attempting to keep the usefulness of a breadboard. Using tactile cues rather than the traditional visual, a visually impaired individual can figure out what is positive or negative.

Braille is the obvious choice for general communication of inputs and outputs. Where [Tara]’s ingenuity came in was the method of incorporating Braille into the boards — solder joints. After reading a Hackaday article on solder Braille, [Tara] managed a fitting and efficient method of allowing ease of use.

Currently, the boards are in a prototyping stage; however, if you want to try them out yourself early, let [Tara] know. Others with visual impairments are needed to properly stress test the device. If you are someone who does not struggle with any major visual impairments, it can be hard to put yourself in their shoes. For those empathic (and with VR capabilities) among us, be sure to try it yourself!

One of the practical upsides of improved computer vision systems and machine learning has been the ability of computers to translate text from one language or format to another. [Jchen] used this to develop Braille Vision which can turn inaccessible text into braille on the go.

Using a headless Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 running Tesseract OCR, the device has a microswitch shutter to take a picture of a poster or other object. The device processes any text it finds and gives the user an audible cue when it is finished. A rotary knob on the back of the device then moves the braille display pad through each character. When the end of the message is reached, it then cycles back to the beginning.

Development involved breadboarding an Arduino hooked up to some MOSFETs to drive the solenoids for the braille display until the system worked well enough to solder together with wires and perfboard. Everything is housed in a 3D printed shell that appears similar in size to an old Polaroid instant camera.

We’ve seen a vibrating braille output prototype for smartphones, how blind makers are using 3D printing, and are wondering what ever happened with “tixel” displays? If you’re new to braille, try 3D printing your own trainer out of TPU.

After having been involved in an accident, [Kurt Kohlstedt] suffered peripheral neuropathy due to severe damage to his right brachial plexus — the network of nerves that ultimately control the shoulder, arm, and hand. This resulted in numbness and paralysis in his right shoulder and arm, with the prognosis being a partial recovery at best. As a writer, this meant facing the most visceral fear possible of writing long-form content no longer being possible. While searching for solutions, [Kurt] looked at various options, including speech-to-text (STT), before focusing on single-handed keyboard options.

The reason why STT didn’t really work was simple: beyond simple emails and short messages, the voice-driven process just becomes too involved and tedious with editing, rearranging, and deleting of text fragments. [Kurt] couldn’t see himself doing a single-pass narration of an article text or dealing with hours of dictating cursor movements.

One of the first single-hand typing methods he tried is as simple as it’s brilliant: by moving the functional hand a few keys over (e.g. left hand’s index finger on J instead of F), you can access all keys with a single hand. This causes a lot more stress on the good hand, though. Thus, for a long-term solution, something else would be needed.

Thanks to his state loan program (MNStar), [Kurt] was able to try out Maltron’s ‘Key Bowl’, the TIPY ‘Big Fan’, and the Matias Half-QWERTY keyboard, which describes pretty much what they look like. Of these, the Maltron was functional but very clunky, the TIPY required learning a whole new keyboard layout, something which [Kurt] struggled with. Despite its mere 22 keys, the Matias half-QWERTY offered the most straightforward transition from using a full keyboard.

It was the Matias keyboard that worked the best for [Kurt], as it allowed him to use both his left hand normally, along with adapting the muscle memory of his right hand to the left one. Although [Kurt] didn’t select the Matias in the end, it did inspire him to choose the fourth option: using a custom keymap on his full-sized QWERTY keyboard. In the remaining two parts in this series, Kurt] takes us through the design of this keymap along with how others can set it up and use it.

Our own [Bil Herd] found himself on a similar quest after losing a finger to a ladder accident.

Thanks to [J. Peterson] for the tip.

When it comes to the majority of sports broadcasting, it’s all about the visual. The commentators call the plays, of course, but everything you’re being shown at home is on a screen. Similarly, if you’re in the stadium, it’s all about getting the best possible view from the best seats in the house.

Ultimately, the action can be a little harder to follow for the vision impaired. However, one company is working hard to make sports more accessible to everyone. Enter OneCourt, and their haptic sports display technology.

Haptic, Fantastic

If you can see, following just about any sport is relatively straightforward. Your eyes pick out the players and the lines on the field, and you can follow the ball or puck wherever it may land. Basically, interpreting a sport is just taking in a ton of positional data—the state of the game is represented by the position of the people and the fundamental game piece involved.

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But how do you represent the state of a game to somebody who can’t see? Audio helps, but it’s hard for even the fastest commentator to explain the entire state of the game all at once. As it turns out, touch can be a great tool in this regard. Imagine if you could place your hands down on a football field, and instinctively feel the position of all the players and the ball. That would be impractical, of course, because the field is too big. But if there was a small surface that represented the field in a touchable manner, that might just work.

This is precisely what OneCourt has created. The company realized that many modern professional sports already had high-quality data streams that represented the positions of players and the ball in real time. With the data on hand, they just needed a way to “display” it in a touchable, feelable form. To that end, they created a range of haptic displays that use vibrations to represent the action on the field in a compact tablet-like device. They receive game data over a 5G or WiFi link, and translate it into vibrations across a miniature replica of the playing surface.

OneCourt created a range of devices to suit different sports. A basketball version is marked out with raised lines matching those on the court, and trackable vibrations on the surface tell the user where the ball is going. The company has teamed up to offer devices to spectators going to see the Sacramento Kings and the Portland Trail Blazers at their home games throughout the season.  Those visiting the stadium can request to use one of the devices during the game via guest services, and get a greater insight into the play.

The company has also demonstrated a similar device for use at baseball games, with the characteristic diamond laid out on the haptic surface. The devices were demoted at Dallas’s Glove Life Field last year.

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On a technological level, the hardware appears relatively straightforward. The OneCourt devices just pack an array of vibration motors into a rectangular surface, and they’re controlled based on a feed of gamestate data already collected by the professional leagues. However, for the vision impaired, it’s a gamechanger—allowing them to independently “watch” the game in far greater detail than before.

For now, the devices are very much in a pilot rollout phase. OneCourt is running activations with individual sports teams to offer the devices to vision impaired spectators at their stadiums. However, the intention is that this technology could also be just as useful for fans tuning into a sports broadcast at home. The company hopes to start pre-orders for individual customers in the near future. 

Accessible technology doesn’t always have to be highly advanced or complicated to be useful—or, indeed, fun! Devices like these can open up a whole new world of perception to those that otherwise might find sports difficult or frustrating to follow. Ultimately, that’s a good thing—and something we hope to see more of in future!