Re: should accessible steam games be added to the database
I'm undecided.
First of all, I agree that, in the interests of diversification, games that are accessible should be listed no matter the platform. It doesn't matter how challenging the game is to play; as long as it is aside from the general question of whether it's accessible, it should get a listing.
But I disagree that there is no standard benchmark for accessibility. A game that's accessible only because you can play it entirely from start to finish using nothing but memory is clearly not accessible at all. In this respect, I believe the Steam client is a very serious obstacle. The fact of the matter is that it is actively hostile to accessibility, and the margin by which you can use it at all is barely sufficient to play the games, and requires a tremendous amount of effort, and possibly even sighted help. I cannot on principle advocate games which, even by accident, can be played by a blind person, if a condition of doing so is to endure such appalling mistreatment from the game client. Maybe you want to disagree on the details and that's cool, but you're not going to deny that it takes more than installing the right pieces of software and changing a couple of system settings.
So I want to ask you guys, seriously, if you'd considered any alternative venue for listing such games--maybe as an always up-to-date list under a single entry--by which people could learn about the games, but still be strongly aware of the conditions for playing. If we can get games listings sharing both Steam and some other platform, even better, but it must be possible for users to know what challenges they will face in playing the games on Steam, and that only the most advanced of computer / screen reader users (specifically, NVDA and OCR) are even likely to succeed.
Your thoughts welcome.
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