Mark C. Barlet - Editor in Chief

Mark Barlet's motivation for founding AbleGamers.com came while watching his best friend (Stephanie Walker) of nearly 20 years suffer through incredible amounts of frustration. Stephanie had recently been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and though she had been an avid gamer, her illness forced her to abandon the games that brought her joy.  Mark set off to find answers for her, to get her back into the game, but the search yielded few answers, and a lot more questions. Seeing a void, Mark set out to fill it, and help others.

Disabled himself after sustaining a spinal cord injury, leaving him with some demised use of his left leg, while on active duty in the Air Force, Mark could relate to hitting limitations, and thus, AbleGamers was born.

Mark's day job is working as the Quality Assurance and Business Analyst Manager at SallieMae. In his years of working in the Washington DC area, Mark became a thought leader in compliance and 508 testing (law about how Disabled people interact with government's public information, like websites). Mark has a Masters in Information Systems with 15 years in software quality assurance. Mark has been lead on major development efforts for the United States government, major online retailers and international web operation.

Stephanie Walker - Associate Editor

Stephanie Walker became part of AbleGamers.com because she is a disabled gamer. She went to work on an ordinary day in December of 1999 and in the span of four hours, she became completely paralyzed along her right side. The doctors diagnosed her with the relapsing/remitting form of Multiple Sclerosis. Though most of the feeling and strength never returned, within about six months she recovered some use of her right side. Since then, she has lived in a fairly constant state of changing disability.

These days, you will find Stephanie spending her time with a few different volunteer groups. An Air Force wife of 13 years, she has also spent the last six raising a very loving and mischievous daughter who is now in kindergarten. She is hoping to finish college before her daughter does; she was only three classes short of her degree when she got sick.  However, her abilities and priorities have changed. When she does finally get a chance to return to school, her goal is a masters in healthcare administration. It is Stephanie’s ultimate desire to run her own nursing home.

Stephanie's gaming predates her illness and she remembers all too well what it was like when she tried to get back into gaming after becoming disabled. Back then, there weren’t very many peripherals to help access games. The games themselves were not very flexible or accommodating to someone who needed to make modifications. There have been some improvements in gaming since then, but Stephanie knows better things can be done. She comes to Ablegamers with the hope that we can make a difference if we let ourselves be heard. Gaming is fun that should be accessible to everyone.

Steven Spohn - Senior Contributor

Steven Spohn is a 20-something disabled gamer. He is currently an Information Technology/Visual Communications major at the University of Phoenix. He has contributed to several local businesses and organizations such as Tech-Link with writing brochures and articles. Steven was a speaker to Pittsburgh based companies on the need for technology to aid the disabled workforce. He has been featured in local papers as a standout with a rare type of Muscular Dystrophy, SMA. Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a progressive disease, which weakens muscles impairing motor functions.

Steven has been playing computer games since age 6. He received an assistant engineer certification from Parkway-West Vocational Technical School for auto-CAD design. He interned for HERL, Human Engineering Research Laboratory, in Pittsburgh, PA. He was involved with Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. First Robotics competition for 3 years as co-lead blueprint designer, robot driver, and team member. He hopes to serve the disabled community with informative articles on games, technology, and accessibility.

Tim Donaghy - Field Reporter

Tim Donaghy is a podcaster, gamer, and social critic with a passion or the absurdities of daily life. As a quadriplegic, he became aware of AbleGamers while searching for products he could use to expand his ability to play games. After many conversations with Mark he was brought onto the staff as the Hardware Writer.

Tim's strong personality shines through in everything he does, whether it's writing a hardware review or recording an episode of The Dead Air podcast, which he started in 2003 as a streaming radio show, and continued as a podcast with a group of close friends, gaining an international audience and failing to strike it rich.