Minecraft eye-tracking software makes big accessibility improvements

The folks at Special Effect, the UK charity that works to improve gaming for disabled players by developing specialty controllers, released a big version two of their free EyeMine software recently. The program lets players control Minecraft with an eye-tracker instead of a keyboard and mouse, and it sounds like the new version is quite an upgrade. Special Effect have released a video explaining how EyeMine works and all the big improvements they've made.

The video up above gives a quick overview of EyeMine's new features, for those that aren't as familiar with eye-trackers. You can spot the green bubble floating around the screen to indicate where a player is looking to control the game. For extra detail, their introduction video digs deeper into the new features and improvements in V2.

The big theme seems to be saving time for players by streamlining certain actions and offering customisation for on-screen keyboards specific to what a player is doing or what their particular needs are. The new features can "dramatically cut construction time on large projects by looking and ‘dwelling’ on an area to build and mine in lightning quick time," Special Effect say. Because look, building that castle you've got planned for your server already takes long enough no matter what input device you're using.

You can find out more about EyeMine, and download it for free, over on Special Effect's site.

Ta to Mojang for pointing out the big update. Accessibility for games still isn't the priority that it deserves to be, so it's great to get more eyes on this important improvement.