Hello,
I do not believe creating accessible games from scratch would be
considered viable by any of the game developers.
Blindness is a very low incidence group which only effects .6% of the
population of any technologically advanced country, and up to .8% of
non-technologically advanced countries.
I use to work as an accessibility consultant for a few companies which
develop consumer electronics. Companies are primarily only interested if
they can make a profit. Only very small companies which are trying to
break in to the market typically consider our extremely small numbers as
being a viable market segment.
Some of you may remember the Sharp Talking Time I, one of the best
pocket talking clocks which came out in the early 80's. Within a couple
years, Sharp took it off the market. That clock was very popular amongst
blind people. We purchased several tens of thousands of them.
That clock was not very popular among any other market segment. Sharp
needed several hundred thousand sales to consider the product as viable.
The numbers which we can bring to any mainstream product are currently
no where near enough for the company to consider us as a viable
profit-making group for targeting.
Note: Apple is the only large mainstream company that I am aware of
which has adopted blindness accessibility across its entire product line
as a corporate position. I do hope other large companies follow Apple's
lead, but have my doubts for the near future.
David Chittenden, MS, CRC, MRCAA
Allan Thompson wrote:
Hi Tom,
Do you think it would cost more or less money for a game company like
Sony to make purely accessible games from scratch, then to make a
regular title for the sighted?
My thought is this, could a game company set up a dedicated
department that makes just accessible games that would probably cost
less then a regular title to make, enough of these accisible games
could propel the buying of console systems with peripherals among the
blind and disabled community. The accessible titles could probably be
sold for the same price as sighted games but with a larger profit
perhaps?
Maybe I am just being naive here, what do you and others think?
al
---
Gamers mailing list __ [email protected]
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected].
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org.
All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected].
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
please send E-mail to [email protected].
