[games_access] Gentle Petition

[Eelke Folmer]

I support the petition but I can also understand the viewpoint of the
game industry why games are not being made accessible, if they even
consider it. If every game had to be made accessible to blind, deaf,
mobility and cognitive impaired gamers it would drive many game
companies out of business. Many game companies are already struggling
for survival (not EA games) only 1 in 7 games is able to make a
profit.

If you think of it there are a large number of everyday things in our
lives that we use that are not accessible at all. A bike is not
accessible at all nor a cell phone. Transportation and communication
are probably more important than entertainment.

I think with our petition we should ask for a "reasonable
accommodation" to make games accessible, like implementing  closed
captions or reconfigurable controls,  otherwise I don't think we will
get much support from the games industry. An effort to make game
accessibility mandatory is likely to succeed more with help from the
games industry, than with an industry will try to protect 25.000 jobs.

Cheers Eelke



On 04/12/2007, d. michelle hinn <hinn at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>
> I agree -- We haven't gone down the road of the politics at all yet and I
> think if we approach it the right way that it would be well received and
> maybe even result in awareness amongst gamers, developers, and people who
> would be gamers but don't know that they could be. So a more gentle petition
> to say "hey, we agree that games are important and here's why adding
> accessibility is a good idea..."
>
>
> There's no reason we can't send an informative brief to let legislators know
> about game accessibility even in the US -- when done, this is a GOOD thing
> about games. We send the good things about game accessibility and games to
> start things out versus something that is anti-industry, which we don't want
> to do at this point.
>
>
> And, hey, maybe in 50 years there won't be a need for legislation because
> there will be some incredible breakthrough that none of us can even imagine
> yet! :)
>
>
> Michelle
>
>
>
> Robert (and others) - regarding the petition why don't you consider a
>  compromise? I know in the UK you can quite easily go down the political
> path
>  to get things to the government:
>
>  http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SupportAT/
>
>  What about starting a very simple petition - "We the undersigned want to
> see
>  more accessibility features in games...." - with a bit of an explanation
>  (But not too much) - and some translations into other languages.
>
>  It would be nice to have something to take to developers, indies,
>  home-coders to say lots do want this - it's not just us few people
>  contacting you! And a few years down the line if we're still getting no
>  where - but have everything in place that we can do - then maybe the
>  political path is the way to go.
>
>  Let's face it - in 50 years - accessibility in software will very likely be
>  legislated for (and let's hope it will be so much easier to bring into
>  being) - so Robert's not so far off the mark. It's just so.... slow....
>
>  What do you think re. the gentle petition?
>
>  Barrie
>
>
>
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>


-- 
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Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
Department of CS&E/171
University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
Game interaction design        www.helpyouplay.com
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