I fully agree, Thomas. Bad spelling and punctuation is easily recognizable
and distinguishable between someone who speaks English and someone who isn't
a native English speaker. I cringe as well every time I get emails from this
list or others where people just don't check their spelling, or make grammar
errors that look very, very silly. And another thing about outreach to
developers, and to sighted people in general if you want to adapt
something... I notice a lot of people have very basic ideas of what
accessibility in a game, and those tend to be the ideas that they shoot off
to the developers, and those ideas can be very vague. I myself know from
experience that one simple solution suggested doesn't usually do much. One
has to come up with a list of possible ideas, and then present them in a
professional and mature way. If I hadn't learned it, I would never have got
into the field of Martial arts... some teachers are dead set against
visually impaired or disabled people, not because of dislike or
discrimination... but because of ignorance. But once you suggest to them how
this aspect or that aspect can be adapted to suit people like you, then
they're willing to try. And when you excell, you impress them. It's the same
scenario here. Good communications skills, presentable writing, and a good
solid set of ideas will go further along in accessibility than writing a
developer and saying, "Hey, your game isn't accessible! I don't know if
this'll work, but here's an idea that I just came up with 2 minutes ago
which I don't have all the details for."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 6:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Blind Gamers Being Taken Seriously?
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, you definitely raise some very good points in your message. As
you pointed out the biggest problem in communicating with sighted
developers and the public at large is ignorance on their part. Most
sighted people have never met a blind person before, and even if they
have there is no way of knowing what their experience was if any. Its
our job to correct their impressions through by educating them a step
at a time, and to do it in a way that makes us look like intelligent,
competent, and mature individuals who have something worthwhile to say
about their products and services.
Its for that reason every time I see a poorly written message on
Audyssey or some other access list I inwardly cringe. I can't tell you
how many blind individuals just shoot off a message filled with poor
grammar, lack of proper punctuation, and spelling errors. Like it or
not if a sighted person reads those messages we will be judged one and
all as not very intelligent, as lacking communication skills, etc.
Bottom line, if we want the mainstream public's respect we have to
work for it, and not forgo proper language and writing skills for
convenience sake.
Here at Audyssey we considered adding proofreading to the list
guidelines to improve the quality and clarity of the posts.
Unfortunately, there were some individuals that took serious offense
to that, and felt that the moderators were going too far. All I can
draw from their reaction is they don't care about being taken
seriously and want the rest of the sighted world to view us
negatively, because that's exactly what will happen if they send a
poorly written message to a person or company who has no experience
with the blind. In short, good communication skills will go a long
ways to bridging the gap between the blind and sighted communities.
Cheers!
---
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