u/The-disabled-gamer

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I wanted to put this idea somewhere game developers, both new and experienced, might see it, because I think there is an important accessibility limitation in what we currently call “full input remapping.”
I use an arcade stick because of my disability, and it works extremely well for me. But my particular setup has shown me something that I don’t think normal remapping systems properly account for.
What I would like to do is:
Up/down on one physical stick = move forward/backward
Left/right on that exact same stick = camera left/right
In other words, I want the Y-axis to control movement while the X-axis controls the camera.
I’ve tried creating this kind of setup in games with very extensive remapping options. The game may allow me to make the assignments, but it doesn’t understand what I’m actually trying to do. It treats the analogue stick as a complete input rather than recognising that I’m trying to separate its two axes.
That’s what got me thinking about the term “full input remapping.”
Maybe when these systems were originally designed, nobody had a reason to think about somebody wanting to separate the X and Y axes like this. For most players, there probably isn’t a reason to.
But that’s exactly where accessibility can reveal limitations that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious.
Rather than treating an analogue stick as one complete control, why not allow the X-axis and Y-axis to be independently remapped?
That would give players far more freedom to build control schemes around their physical abilities and whatever controller works for them.
I’m not suggesting that my particular setup should become the default. Quite the opposite. I think accessibility works best when developers give players the flexibility to create configurations that the developer may never have thought of.
That’s why I think independent axis remapping could be a valuable addition whenever developers implement full input remapping.
Sometimes accessibility isn’t about adding an entirely new mode. Sometimes it’s about making an existing accessibility feature flexible enough to actually deserve the word “full.”
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“Full Input Remapping” Isn’t Actually Full — Here’s What I Think Is Missing
I’ve been thinking about the difference between “full input remapping” and “single-stick gameplay,” and I think there is a major accessibility feature missing from most games.
I use an arcade stick because it works very well for me. It is actually quite flexible and allows me to remap controls. However, there is something I would love to be able to do that neither the controller software nor most games allow.
I want to be able to use different axes of the same physical stick for different functions.
For example:
Up/down on the stick = move forward/backward
Left/right on the same stick = move the camera left/right
At the moment, games generally don’t allow this. Even games advertised as having “full input remapping” often see unusual combinations or duplicate assignments as a conflict. The game tells you that two controls are conflicting instead of allowing you to say, “Yes, I know. That’s exactly what I want.”
That makes me question what “full input remapping” actually means.
If I genuinely had full control over remapping — including individual axes, intentional duplicate inputs and unusual combinations — I could create my own accessible control schemes based on what physically works for me.
It also raises an interesting question about the “single-stick gameplay” accessibility label.
If full remapping were flexible enough, a lot of single-stick configurations could potentially be created by the player themselves. You wouldn’t necessarily need developers to predict every possible control scheme a disabled player might need.
Of course, some single-stick modes do more than remapping. They may automatically control the camera, targeting or character orientation. But there are plenty of situations where simply giving players greater control over individual axes could make a huge difference.
This also comes back to something I’ve been thinking about regarding accessible gaming in general: hardware and software need to work together.
You can give someone an incredibly adaptable controller, but if the game refuses to accept the control configuration they need, the hardware can only take them so far. Likewise, accessible software isn’t much use if someone can’t physically operate the hardware.
I think of it almost like yin and yang. Hardware is one half and software is the other. Neither one should be expected to solve everything by itself.
Accessibility should be about flexibility and adaptation. Instead of deciding which control configurations players are supposed to use, give us the tools to create the configurations that actually work for us.
To me, full input remapping should genuinely mean full input remapping.
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I’ve noticed an accessibility issue that applies across different devices and operating systems, including Apple and Windows.
A lot of devices and apps abbreviate days of the week. For example, instead of displaying Tuesday, they might display Tue, and instead of Thursday, they display Thu.
I find this confusing because Tuesday and Thursday both begin with T, and when the words are shortened, I can easily mix up which day is which.
I think there should be a system-wide accessibility option on all devices that lets you choose to always spell out days and months in full.
For example:
Tue, 8 Sep → Tuesday, 8 September
This might seem like a small thing, but accessibility is often about small changes that make information much easier to understand. It would also mean people wouldn’t have to rely on individual apps choosing whether to abbreviate dates.
I’d be interested to know if anyone else has difficulty with abbreviated days or dates.

I was looking through Xbox’s accessibility filters and came across something that genuinely makes no sense to me.
I selected Single stick gameplay. The whole point of single-stick gameplay is that a player should not have to rely on two analogue sticks to play the game.
To my surprise, one of the games that appeared was DOOM: The Dark Ages — a first-person shooter.
If you know FPS games, you’ll know that they normally rely heavily on both analogue sticks: one for movement and the other for aiming and controlling the camera.
I know DOOM: The Dark Ages isn’t realistically a single-stick game because I own it and have played it. I cannot find a way of playing through the game using only one analogue stick in the way this accessibility label suggests.
What makes this even more ironic is that DOOM: The Dark Ages actually has an accessibility feature that I think is fantastic: Game Speed. You can slow the entire game down, giving you much more time to react and making the game considerably easier to control. Bethesda itself describes Game Speed as an accessibility setting, allowing the game to be adjusted from 50% to 150%.
Yet Xbox doesn’t have a specific accessibility tag for this extremely useful feature, while apparently giving the game a Single stick gameplay tag that I cannot see any justification for.
Microsoft’s own Xbox Accessibility Guidelines specifically say that games should not require two analogue sticks to complete gameplay mechanics in order to meet this kind of single-stick accessibility requirement. They even acknowledge that FPS games traditionally require two sticks but can provide alternative single-stick controls.
So how did DOOM: The Dark Ages get this accessibility tag?
This isn’t just a technicality. Accessibility labels matter. Someone who can only use one analogue stick could filter the Xbox Store specifically for Single stick gameplay, see DOOM: The Dark Ages in the results, spend money on it, and then discover that they still need both sticks to play.
Accessibility information needs to be accurate. Disabled players rely on it to determine whether they can actually play a game before spending their money.
If Xbox is going to promote accessibility filters as a way for disabled players to find games they can play, those labels need to mean something.

The attitude I received after raising an accessibility issue on an Xbox subreddit
I wanted to share something that happened to me recently and see what people here think about the way the conversation developed.
It started when I was browsing the Xbox Store and looking specifically at accessibility features.
I have limited fine motor control, so there are certain input accessibility features that can make a major difference to whether I can comfortably play a game.
I decided to use Xbox’s own accessibility filters and selected three:
Single stick gameplay
Adjustable input sensitivity
Full input remapping
After applying all three filters, I was left with seven games.
I actually took pictures showing the three filters I had selected and the number of games that appeared.
That bothered me. Xbox talks a lot about accessibility and has done some genuinely good work in this area, but seven games seemed like an incredibly small selection when using three accessibility features that are particularly important for people with limited motor control.
So I posted about it on an Xbox subreddit.
My argument was basically that if Xbox recognises these things as accessibility features, I would like to see stronger accessibility standards and encouragement across the platform so disabled players have a much larger selection of games.
I wasn’t expecting everyone to agree with me.
I’ve talked about accessibility many times before and I’ve had plenty of people disagree with me. Some of those disagreements have turned into really interesting conversations. Someone can completely disagree with my position, defend the company or explain why they think my proposed solution wouldn’t work. That’s fine.
But that’s not how parts of this particular discussion went.
Some of the responses I received included:
“Complain about something else please.”
“Tell us you don’t know about anything without telling us.”
And another person referred to what I was saying as “yapping.”
There were also repeated responses telling me that accessibility was the developers’ responsibility and not Xbox’s.
I tried several times to explain that I wasn’t saying Xbox personally develops every game or that every accessibility feature should be mandatory in every game. I was talking about whether a platform holder could do more to encourage stronger accessibility standards.
I also explained that accessible hardware doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
For example, I use an arcade stick for certain games because it works extremely well for me, particularly survival roguelites that can be played using one stick. But accessible hardware shouldn’t mean someone is confined to the small number of games that happen to work with their particular setup.
Another point eventually came up that there may actually be more Xbox games containing these accessibility features that simply aren’t tagged correctly in the Store.
But that creates another problem: how is a disabled player supposed to know those features exist before buying the game?
At that point, though, the original accessibility issue almost became secondary.
What really struck me was the attitude.
There is a massive difference between saying:
“I disagree with you, and here’s why.”
and:
“Complain about something else.”
I don’t expect people to agree with everything I say about accessibility. I don’t even want that. A respectful disagreement can be an excellent conversation.
But when somebody raises an accessibility barrier that affects how they can physically use something, I don’t understand why the response needs to become dismissive, insulting or condescending.
That’s what I wanted to share here.
The Xbox accessibility issue is what started the conversation, but I’m posting this here because of what happened to the conversation once I raised it.

I want to explain something that I think is often misunderstood about the R-word.
I am not talking about someone mentioning the word in a documentary, discussing its history, quoting somebody, or using it in an educational context. I am talking specifically about everyday people using it as an insult.
People sometimes say that using the R-word against someone who does not have an intellectual disability means it isn’t offensive towards disabled people.
I don’t understand that argument.
If you call someone the R-word because you think they are stupid, incompetent or have done something foolish, why is that word an insult in the first place?
The insult works because a term historically associated with people with intellectual disabilities is being used to represent stupidity or inferiority.
The person you are insulting doesn’t have to be disabled. You are still using disability as the basis of the insult.
Society rightly recognises that racial and other group-based slurs can demean an entire group of people. I believe disability-related slurs should be treated with the same seriousness.
The R-word actually came from terminology that was once used medically. But medical professionals and organisations moved away from that terminology as it became increasingly associated with stigma and derogatory use. That should tell us something about what the word has become in everyday language.
My argument is simple:
Don’t use a group of human beings as the basis of an insult.
Disabled people deserve the same basic respect as everyone else. Disability-related slurs should not get a special pass simply because society has become accustomed to hearing them.

People often say that society has moved on from the days when disabled people were hidden away in institutions or kept out of sight because families were ashamed of them. History shows that many disabled people were locked away, separated from society, or treated as though they were worth less than everyone else.
I believe the biggest difference today is not that this attitude has disappeared, but that the way it is expressed has changed.
In the past, disabled people were physically hidden from society. Today, I believe we are politically hidden. Instead of openly saying that disabled people matter less, governments promise change, announce plans, create strategies, and make commitments that are delayed for years or never fully delivered. Meanwhile, the rest of society continues to move forward while disabled people are left waiting.
From my experience, this creates a different kind of segregation. It is no longer carried out through institutions or locked doors. Instead, it happens through delays, bureaucracy, underfunding, and political decisions that leave disabled and older people at the back of the queue. The outcome feels similar: we are expected to wait while everyone else gets on with their lives.
This is not an abstract political argument to me. It comes from my own experiences and from watching other disabled people face the same barriers.
One example is my own situation. A bus stop was installed directly outside my bedroom window. I explained how it affected my quality of life and asked for it to be relocated. Rather than feeling that my concerns were taken seriously, I felt they were passed from one person to another, with little sense of urgency. The impression I was left with was, “What can we do?” rather than, “How do we solve this?” That experience reinforced my belief that accessibility and disability issues are often treated as lower priorities than other public concerns.
I felt the same pattern became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. In my view, when society was under the greatest pressure, many disabled people and older people were left feeling forgotten or treated as less of a priority. That strengthened my belief that, although the methods have changed since the 1950s and 1960s, the underlying problem has not disappeared.
I am not saying that today’s society is identical to the past. I am saying that discrimination can evolve. It no longer has to be obvious or openly admitted. It can exist through political decisions, repeated delays, lack of urgency, and a failure to act. To me, that is the modern form of exclusion.
This is my lived experience. It is the conclusion I have reached after years of advocating for accessibility and equal treatment, and after seeing how often disabled and older people are expected to wait for rights, services, and solutions that others take for granted.