[games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 11

[John R. Porter]

I agree, and think it's really an issue of pragmatics. Would it be nice if
someone could wave a magic wand and make every game completely accessible
to everyone? Sure, of course it would. But that's a totally unrealistic
goal, and because of that, it's somewhat limited in its usefulness.

It's easy (and something that happens often in academia) to fall into the
trap of focusing too hard on trying to find a "magic bullet" solution and
say that the only right answer is one that totally evens the playing field
for everyone. But that sort of conversation is more philosophical than
practical. It would be like if all physicists spent the last 50 years
exclusively trying to discover the Grand Unified Theory, and didn't bother
to solve any of the more discrete challenges -- we'd have a lot of
arguments and heady publications, but not a lot of useful discoveries to
show for it.

Instead, we need to start by acknowledging that this is an imperfect
scenario. Game experiences are too varied, and the spectrum of human
capabilities so wide, that you can't make *everyone* happy. For games to be
as complex and entertaining as some players want, other players will
invariably be isolated from native participation (and that's where the job
of assistive technology researchers like myself come into play, as this is
the gap we have to bridge). That's of course not to say that the
responsibility falls off of game developers, because the success of
assistive technologies is wholly dependent on how much they are willing to
work with us and compromise. But that said, Universal Design is an
extremely challenging prospect in any design field, and maybe most so in
gaming.

Trying to maximize the ability for *as many people as possible* to play *the
games they want to play*, but realizing that it's an issue that will never
be *completely* solved, is a much better aspiration.

At least that's my two cents...

-John

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Steve Spohn <steve at ablegamers.com> wrote:

> I might be be the unpopular one here, but our jobs in game accessibility
> is not to make every game accessible to every disability. Our job is to use
> accessible gaming as a tool to help more disabled gamers get into a wider
> swath of games. We cannot save the world from having barriers, we just need
> to remove the ones we can.
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Sandra Uhling <sandra_uhling at web.de>wrote:
>
>>  Hi,****
>>
>> it is a paper: “do not give to others” J****
>>
>> But this is not only because of the paper.****
>>
>> It is a general problem.****
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Steve Spohn
> Editor-In-Chief
> The AbleGamers Foundation
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