[games_access] You Can Make a Difference

[John Bannick]

Folks,

The SIG does more to make computer games accessible than anywhere else 
I've found on the Web.

Here's something additional we all can do this month.

1. Buy accessible games as gifts (Not necessarily ours, but anyones')
2. Suggest to friends and family that accessible games make good gifts
3. And, most importantly, suggest to everyone who'll stand still for a 
minute that they tell game companies when they've bought their game 
because it was accessible.

Our own 7-128 Software recently released Visit Salem, a travelogue game. 
It includes over 6 hours of audio descriptions, history, architecture, 
music and interviews. It's also totally inaccessible to players who are 
blind, deaf, or motion-impaired.

Why? Because it would take an additional 6 months to make it accessible. 
Even with a code base that includes a lot of accessibility features and 
useful guidance from John Oliveira, a colleague and head of our 
Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and from you and other folks I 
know in the accessibility community.

I'd love to make it accessible to players who are blind, or deaf, or 
motion-impaired. But the consensus among our management team is that 
there are too few potential sales to justify the effort and expense, at 
least at this time.

Game margins are razor slim. Electronic Arts lost tens of millions of 
dollars this year, also last year. The difference between profit and 
loss at our small mainstream company is tiny.

Posts by other colleagues suggest that a few more sales could help pay 
their light bills, too.

Posts by Barrie, Dark, Mark Barlet, Brian Papineau, and my own 
experience here suggest that some mainstream game companies do respond 
positively when you tell them "I buy your stuff because you make it work 
for me. I buy other people's stuff when you don't" (Recent news 
notwithstanding)

So, over the next few weeks you personally can make a difference by 
bugging people to buy accessible games and for them to tell developers 
when they do.

John Bannick
Chief Technical Officer
7-128 Software


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