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Mark Barlet, founder of AbleGamers, is the 2021 recipient of the\u00a0Vanguard Award by Games for Change<\/a>, a non-profit that promotes the power of games for social impact.<\/p>\n Although I knew about\u00a0AbleGamers, having worked to provide accessibility information to families in the\u00a0database of video games<\/a>\u00a0I\u2019ve created, I hadn\u2019t heard of Barlet\u2019s pivotal journey in the video game industry. He has quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) been working in the assistive technology space for 25 years since leaving the Air Force in 1996 with an injury.<\/p>\n When his friend, Stephanie Walker, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004 she was no longer able to play video games. In response, Barlet founded the AbleGamers non-profit to build the assistance she and other people needed to play the video games they loved.<\/p>\n Speaking to Barlet about the award, it\u2019s fascinating and moving to hear him join the dots from where he started to where AbleGamers is now. \u201cHow do you change a 64 billion dollar industry from the outside,\u201d he says, talking about the early years. \u201cIt\u2019s not by giving people a place to complain, it\u2019s about the games themselves and building a community of advocates.\u201d<\/p>\n