Comparison of Accessibility Game Control Interfaces Performance to Enable Para-Esports for Persons with Upper-Limb Deficiencies

Persons with physical disabilities are often excluded from social activities, including video games, esports and para-esports. Accessibility controllers exist in the market, but they compromise performance which results in a disadvantage playing the game. In this work we present a basic investigation on accessible game control interfaces with an in-game testing environment using a driving simulator. We compared two input modes: discrete and continuous; and four control interfaces: forearm posture, forearm muscle activation, joystick operated by the forearm, and joystick operated by the wrist joint. The results showed that there are significant differences between the control interfaces when used in the discrete and continuous input modes, and differences among the control interfaces. Measurement of actions per second showed the forearm muscle activation to be better than the forearm posture, and measurement of the throughput of the control interfaces showed the forearm posture to be better than the forearm muscle activation. These results inform the design of accessibility game controllers with high performance. The results are compared to related works to inform the reader on their limitations.