How A Basically Blind Girl Can Play Nintendo Games

Jennifer Powers suffered an anoxic brain injury at birth, and as a result she’s practically blind, unable to “focus within a few inches of her face, even with very thick glasses”. That should rule her out of playing regular video games, but nope, luckily, she’s found a way to get her game on.

As her father Jeremy writes on his blog, because of the quirks of the Wii U’s design – which in some games lets users mirror the TV content on the console’s large controller screen – Jennifer’s able to do something she’s always wanted: play games with her family.

In particular, he points out the character of Nabbit in New Super Luigi U, which is not only controlled on the Wii U controller (so Jennifer can get close enough to see), but is invulnerable, so she can screw up and not die all the time because she can’t quite play as “well” as the game needs.

Maybe not what Nintendo had in mind when they designed the console/game, but hey, it’s a winner nonetheless.

The GamePad Helped My Daughter Play Her First Game (and She’s Almost Blind) [Zenspath, via Game Politics]