Week 11: Accessibility

Week 11 — cursor speed as the one parameter that decides whether an adaptation is playable at all

3 May 2027

Every earlier week assumed the player decides when a signal happens — when to press, when to release, when to keep tempo. Scanning removes that assumption entirely: an external clock decides when each option is available, and the player’s only choice is whether to confirm on it. That’s not a smaller version of the game — it’s the same set of choices, offered on someone else’s schedule instead of yours.

The cursor’s speed is the one parameter that decides whether this is playable at all for a given person, and it cuts both ways: too fast, and confirming in time becomes the whole difficulty, regardless of what the underlying game was about; too slow, and the game stops feeling like the one you built, because there’s no urgency left to time against. Getting that speed right for a specific player isn’t a settings-menu afterthought — it’s the actual design work scanning access asks for.

Outline#

• scanning as moving the clock from the player to the interface, not a stripped-down version of player-timed input
• cursor speed as the parameter that decides whether an adaptation is playable at all, and why it cuts both ways
• why this is a change in what “skill” means for whoever’s playing, not a bolt-on mode