[games_access] Game control question...

[d. michelle hinn]

>On Jan 20, 2008 6:54 PM, Michael Ellison <devellison at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  important.  Kinda funny we have to prove that, since even animals play
>>  games to enhance their lives and humans have pretty complex games that
>>  we play today that have been played for centuries.
>
>Just reread that and wanted to make sure my meaning is clear - I think
>the research and proof is absolutely critical, especially when talking
>to insurance companies, resource centers, and legislatures about
>funding.   What you're doing is awesome and critically important, it's
>just that it seems like people should inherently *know* that games are
>important to quality of life.

Yeah, I do agree. Unfortunately when it comes to disability and game 
accessibility, we have to fight the good fight to say that 
games/leisure are so important that it can have the power to gift the 
gift of the will to live after a critical accident. Instead we/I 
often get responses like "ok, but is it MORE important than XYZ?" Yes 
and no -- of course if there is nothing in place to help someone 
breathe and so forth...then ok, that's going to obviously get first 
priority. But to shrug it off as completely frivolous? That's not the 
right answer either. Art, music, games, literature, comics, 
television...these are the things that help make life interesting and 
worth wanting to stick around another day.

Those of us on this list? We all understand this. But there are a lot 
of weirdness out there. I've heard from doctors, parents, etc more 
than once "but isn't it good that games are inaccessible so that we 
can help *protect* them from this?" Huh, what? Note, that these 
responses have almost always been from people who are not disabled 
and/or do not have a child, spouse, parent, sibling, friend, etc who 
is disabled. I could go on and on for a few hundred pages about the 
word "protect." But to save everyone the bandwidth, I won't right 
now. ;) But It's a freedom of choice issue. To assume that all people 
with disabilities need some sort of social censorship when it comes 
to games, etc is to assume all people with disabilities are *exactly* 
alike and need someone to make the choice about what information they 
have access to for them. I can smell a dystopia a mile away and we're 
on the frontlines.

But then I've also heard doctors and parents and people with 
disabilities say "is there something that will allow my patient/my 
child/me to play games again?" So all is not lost. But, yeah, it is 
kind of crazy that we have to tell people with research/stats/etc 
backing us up, what seems to be a pretty simple concept. But that's 
the world we live in.

Michelle