“Enabled Play is a device that learns to work with you — not a device you have to learn to work with,” Dunn, who lives in Boston, tells Zoom.
Dunn, 26, created Enabled Play so that everyone — including his disabled younger brother — can interact with technology naturally and intuitively. At the start of the pandemic, all he and his New Hampshire-based brother could do together, while about 70 miles apart, was wild.
“And then I started to see firsthand some of the challenges he had and the limitations games had for people with really any kind of disability,” he added.
At age 17, Dunn left Worcester Polytechnic Institute to become a full-time software engineer. He started researching and developing Enabled Play two and a half years ago, which initially proved challenging as most speech recognition programs lagged behind in response time.
“I built some prototypes with voice commands, and then I started talking to people who were deaf and had various disabilities, and I found that voice commands weren’t enough,” Dunn said.
Then he started thinking outside the box.
Dunn had already built Suave Keys, a voice-activated program for gamers with disabilities, and created Snap Keys – an extension that turns a user’s Snapchat lens into a controller when playing games like Call of Duty, “Fall Guys” and “Dark Souls”. In 2020, he won two awards for his work at Snap Inc.’s Snap Kit Developer Challenge, a competition between third-party app makers to innovate Snapchat’s developer toolkit.
With Enabled Play, Dunn takes accessibility to the next level. With a wider variety of inputs, users can connect the supporting device – equipped with a robust CPU and 8 GB RAM – to a computer, game console or other device to play games in the way that works best for them.
Dunn also spent time making sure that Enabled Play was accessible to people who are deaf, as well as those who non-verbal audio input, such as “ooh” or “aah”, to perform an action. Enabled Play’s vowel sound detection model is based on “The Vocal Joystick,” which engineers and language experts at the University of Washington developed in 2006.
“Essentially, it seems to predict what word you’re going to say based on what’s in the profile, rather than trying to assume it could be any word in the dictionary,” Dunn said. “This helps break down machine learning biases by learning more about how the individual speaks and applying it to the commands they want.”
Dunn’s AI-powered controller takes into account a person’s natural inclinations. If a gamer wants to set a jump command every time they open their mouth, Enabled Play identifies that person’s individual resting mouth position and sets that as the baseline.
In January, Enabled Play was officially launched in six countries – the user base stretched from the US to the UK, Ghana and Austria. For Dunn, one of his primary goals was to fill a gap in accessibility and pricing compared to other supporting gaming devices.
“There are things like the Xbox Adaptive Controller. There are things like the HORI Flex [for Nintendo Switch]. There’s things like Tobii, who does eye tracking and stuff like that. But it still seemed like it wasn’t enough,” he said.
Compared to some devices that are only compatible with one game system or computer at a time, Dunn’s AI-compatible controller – priced at $249.99 – supports a combination of inputs and outputs. Speech therapists say Dunn’s device offers simplicity compared to assistive and alternative communication (AAC) devices, which are medically essential for some with disabilities.
“This is just the beginning,” said Julia Franklin, a speech therapist at the Community School of Davidson in Davidson, NC. Franklin introduced students to Enabled Play this summer and believes it is a better alternative to other AAC devices on the market that are often “expensive, bulky, and limited” in usability. Many advanced AAC systems can range from $6,000 to $6,000. $11,500 for high-tech devices, with low-end eye trackers running into the thousands.A person can also download AAC apps on their mobile devices, which range from $49.99 to $299.99 for the app alone .
“Many people who have physical and cognitive differences often exhaust themselves learning a complex AAC system with boundaries,” she said. “The Enabled Play device allows individuals to leverage their strengths and moves that are already in place.”
Internet users have praised Dunn for his work, noting that asking for accessibility shouldn’t equate to asking for an “easy mode” — a misconception often cited by critics about making games more accessible.
“This is how you make gaming accessible,” one Reddit user wrote about Enabled Play. “Not by covering it up, but by creating mechanical solutions that allow users to have the same experience and deliver the same performance as [people without disabilities].” Another user who said they regularly worked with young patients with cerebral palsy speculated that Enabled Play would “literally change their lives.”
But the device is not limited to the gaming sphere. It is also used in schools to make computer labs more accessible. With the proliferation of remote work and online learning environments due to the pandemic, Jaipreet Virdi, a historian, author and professor at the University of Delaware, said the device could serve as a model for “inclusive participation” in schools.
“If this allows disabled students to learn and keep up with the expected rate of education [assistive] technologies, so they can graduate with more opportunities than their disabled ancestors ever had,” Virdi said.
In some therapy programs in the US, specialists use Enabled Play to track facial expressions and gamify treatment sessions. Alissa McFall, a speech-language pathologist and orofacial myologist in Sacramento, said it could be used to analyze how a patient’s muscles are working so health professionals can then use that feedback to develop customized treatment plans.
“The greatest value we have seen so far in using the Enabled Play device is that it can be programmed to read natural communication movements and associate any sound or facial expression with a function that is meaningful to a person,” said McFall.
Since its launch in January, Enabled Play has partnered with a number of gaming and assistive technology organizations, including Special Effect, Makers Making Change, and more recently, Microsoft with its Designed for Xbox accessibility partner program. Next, Dunn hopes to roll out “virtual devices” soon, which will allow other developers to add Enabled Play input to their apps. These additions allowed a person to use facial expressions and voice commands in Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop without buying a separate device.
As developers look for ways to make technology more accessible, Dunn hopes to drive that change and encourage others to think well beyond typical keyboard and mouse inputs.
“It is a very personal mission of mine to solve these problems,” he said. “That’s the difference I’m looking for, which is building devices that change the paradigm of human-computer interaction to one that’s just more inclusive.”
Amanda Florian is a journalist based between the US and Shanghai. She covers technology, culture and the new media scene in China.
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