Alt Controller was developed by and is maintained by Tim Brogden (me). I have been interested in assistive technology since around 2008 when I needed to find some more comfortable ways of continuing my programming career.
This software came to exist after I was introduced to the wonderful people at SpecialEffect and was kindly invited to visit their centre in Charlbury and learn about the work that the charity does. It was immediately clear that the lack of accessibility features in many computer games was a major issue.
We discussed the idea of creating a program to emulate game controls in a way that was independent of the games themselves. At that time, I had already developed a prototype for a program focused on game controller input, and I realised that the same idea could be applied to mouse pointer control to help eye gaze users.
So I beavered away for a few months and created Alt Controller. It has always been a bit experimental and certainly not perfect, but I am pleased that it has created a couple of additional possibilities that help people play games.
I’m grateful to all the people who have given me feedback and suggestions, particularly those who followed the project in its early days and those who are currently creating excellent instructive videos to promote the use of this and other assistive technology. This provides the motivation to keep the project gradually rolling forward.
Why the name “Alt Controller”? Well it’s a program that controls the keys (including “Alt” and…) in order to create alternative controls. Yes, it’s a pretty bad pun, I know…
Tim