A Greater Manchester project that uses the power of gaming to improve the lives of people with disabilities has received over £100,000 of National Lottery funding.
Everyone Can has received the grant from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, to continue its sessions, which have become a lifeline to those living with disabilities.
It is one of almost 400 charities and community groupsacross the North West to have been awarded almost £19 million of National Lottery funding over the last three months
Each week the Sale-based charity holds four different ‘Everyone Can Game’ sessions for up to 30 gamers, supporting people with physical and learning disabilities to have fun and make friends, while allowing parents the chance to grow their own support circles.
The group also hosts technology awareness sessions, where visitors are shown how to adapt computers and mobile phones to give them better access, such as installing voice recognition software and eye tracking equipment.
The charity is passionate about the potential of gaming to change lives, and tackling issues such as loneliness and mental wellbeing.
Richard Bull, fundraiser at Everyone Can, said: “‘We feel there can be a stigma attached to gaming and people have negative perceptions of it. However, gaming has many benefits – it is now part of modern culture and we feel those with disabilities should not miss out. For children who have very little physical movement, being able to help them join in a game with other children, seeing them smile and having fun, is very rewarding.”
One person that has benefitted from the sessions is Amy, whose family contacted the charity after looking at ways to help their daughter play video games with her friends.
Amy has cerebral palsy, a disability that affects her whole body and makes most daily tasks difficult. The team consulted their library of adapted hardware and software and carried out an assessment of Amy to find ways she could join in with the sessions, as well as improve other areas of her life.
Richard said: “Until our involvement, Amy had used a scribe, someone employed to write down everything she wished to write. After assessing her particular needs, we were able to come up with the solution of Amy dictating directly to a computer.
“Speech recognition works brilliantly and effortlessly for typing text, however manipulating or editing text can be more laboured and frustrating. This is where we included Amy’s gaming abilities, turning her ability to access buttons to run, jump and cast a spell, into copy and pasting, spell checking and formatting text, automated tasks that would otherwise be tricky to do by voice control alone.
“Amy is now able to keep up with the amount of school work she is required to produce and more importantly, she is able to do this by herself. This also opens up the ability to send emails, texts and other ways of communicating, without involving others.”
The charity is now looking to increase the number of sessions it offers, as well as introducing a quieter session for some of its autistic gamers.
Richard added: “This grant award is extremely important to us and we’d like to thank The National Lottery Community Fund and National Lottery players for helping us make sure ‘Everyone Can Game!”
