At last we've been recognised and wheelchairs are coming to an Xbox near you ! Phil Spencer who heads up Xbox has today confirmed that the games avatars will soon be available to place within digital wheelchairs in an attempt to provide yet more customisation for gamers.

As we learned a few years ago a large proportion of young wheelchair users engage in gaming with some spending many hours a week pursuing their online gaming interests.

As players like to base their Avatar on their own identity, Xbox is constantly looking for new ways to enable this self customisation. Avatars, which are cartoony looking digital characters are unique to each player and in theory resemble the players characteristics in reality, so why not wheelchairs ? its about time surely. This life-likeness allows gamers to express their real emotion alongside their gaming persona.

So it has taken since 2008 for Microsoft to begin to cater for disabled gamers in the real sense. Its good to think that they are at least listening and are open to suggestions from disabled users in general and in this case wheelchair users. This is probably thanks to one user who used Twitter to start a petition, not long after Phil Spencer confirmed that just such an option is on its way real soon.

With the new Xbox slim just around the corner in August it will be interesting to see if the wheelchair avatar modification is ready by then.