[games_access] epilepsy and gaming

[Ben Sawyer]

This is interesting to think about but I would worry about hooking up  
with lawyers suing the industry.  Not that it shouldn't be a right to  
do but diplomatically this might cause a stir.


On Jun 5, 2007, at 6:35 PM, Eelke Folmer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> After the "virtual" lawsuit against Secondlife for not being
> accessible a few months ago I found another one (which is actually
> even older) http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/james-sokolove/ which deals
> with epilepsy. Maybe we can include epilepsy also as a disability in
> our research. Its funny I see so many games with epilepsy warnings but
> I've never considered it to be a disability. (cognitive? or perhaps
> visual since they're triggered throught visual stimuli) Anyone have an
> idea for this?
>
> I wonder what kind of guidelines game developers have to follow to
> prevent people getting epileptic seizures? 50 million people worldwide
> suffer from epilepsy. Maybe game developers can offer an epilepsy safe
> mode which disables stroboscopic light effects in their games. (though
> only 5% of the people with epilepsy are affected by strobe lights,
> according to wikipedia)
>
> Anyway Jim sokolove seems to be the guy behind the lawsuit, maybe we
> can hook up with him.
> http://www.jimsokolove.com/other/video-games/index.aspx
>
> does anyone know any studies dealing with this?
>
> cheers Eelke
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ------
> 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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