Hello Dakotah Rickard
I totally 100 & 50% agree with you. We as in the blind community
need to stand together. It's not like there are just a couple of thousands
of blind people out there but more like a couple of hundreds of thousands of
blind people, and if we stand together to make our voices heard we can get a
lot more done. I think it's discriminatory that there is close caption on
DVD's, blue rays, games, TV, and even iPhones. Deaf people with kids even
have support groups for their kids, but there are no support groups for my
son or darter. I think it hit them harder when I lost my eyesight. The
hardest part about that is when my son or darter cries to me that they wish
I could see again. Just so I can do the things I use to do with them like
playing video games with them.
Truly
James
-----Original Message-----
From: Dakotah Rickard [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2013 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] You Don't Know Jack for iOS
It isn't that I demand accessibility for every app. I am more than familiar
with the concept that some literally cannot be made to work.
What strikes me as a problem is the fact that some apps, which are
inaccessible, could be made accessible with just a little extra effort or
knowledge.
It isn't that I'm saying "Gimmy more, more, more!" I think, frankly, that
the best way to handle accessibility would be a forward-looking approach. We
could sit and complain, and I have done on a couple of occasions, about how
an app doesn't present accessibility features, even though it could, or how
a game doesn't present certain functions, added at little expense or effort,
which would make it a perfectly playable mainstream game.
Rather, I think the solution is to inform developers about other, better
ways of making games accessible. The deaf community, united, brought us
Closed Captioning, which gives a printed readout, on the screen, of any
dialogue. That is widely made available now, because of gentle, long-term
pressure. The deaf community, united once again, is now pushing for
captioning of sounds as well as dialogue. This is because they have already
established a bit of what they want and, rather than saying "We're
satisfied. We should not ask for more." They said "We have something nice,
and the mainstream population also benefit from it. Let's see if we can get
an additional feature which would be brilliant."
I suggest that the blind community, when it is united, doesn't know what it
wants and certainly doesn't know how to ask for it. I respect the efforts of
the people who have tried, and I know that what I'm saying may come out as
offensive, but the plain fact is that developers who learn about audiogames
would probably be highly turned off by the amount of beeps, blips, whistles,
and clicks that they might have to incorporate.
Smaller developers, again I mension Ernest Woo, want to squeeze every penny
out of their apps, so they'll push for accessibility, if you sell it to them
the right way. The right way, is according to myself, and as I said before,
if I had any incling of how I ought to do it, I'd start an organization on
that point. There's certainly a right and a wrong way, maybe several of
each, but I'll put it this way.
The Wii Sports game's menus are accessible, because they are simple.
If you remember where things are, you will be in pretty good shape.
Wii Fit's menus are not inaccessible, but they are less so, because they
wrap around without making a sound to indicate it, so if ever you lose your
place, you're up the creek without a paddle and have to get out of that menu
and start over.
A conscientious blind accessibility community organization would have
applied to have beta testers, at least, of this widely sold, household name
product. Having done so, we would provide simple feedback like, "Your menu
is hard to navigate, although pretty much everything else is at least
basically useable, because there's no way of knowing when you wap the menu
around." Nintendo might scoff at this, but I doubt it, as it would be a
very, very simple change to implement. We wouldn't be asking for voiced
audio of the exercise names, at least until we had established ourselves,
under one flag, as a united concern.
Consider all of this, and ask yourself, for example, how difficult it would
have been to make the app accessible. Then consider that this app is the
present. If the developer JellyVision Games, doesn't consider accessibility
a priority, even in simple accessibility features, then more apps will come
out that we will be hard pressed to use.
Consider what would happen if one person asked them to change. Then think
about what would happen if a hundred different people asked.
THen think of what would happen if an organization, whose membership might
range from only a few people, say about ten, to thousands of people asked
for just a little bit more accessibility, here and there, made it standard
practice, like closed captioning, and found a way to make it benefit sighted
players, as well. It sounds like a far-fetched dream, but so did holding a
single device with tens upon tens of readily playable games that you could
take anywhere, only a few years ago.
If I knew how, I would make that dream a reality. Maybe someone with more
gumption than I, or with more experience, will take this idea and make it
more than a dream. Maybe I will, someday, but the point is that being
content with what we have is a great moral position, and I largely agree
with it on a personal basis, but why should the blind community be content
when we could easily, very easily, have more?
Signed:
Dakotah Rickard
On 2/6/13, ryan chou <[email protected]> wrote:
> elena,very well said, :D
> my opinion almost exactly, but my thoughts are also,if its not
> accessible at first site, get some sited help and see what can be done
> about it, don't just give up on the app
>
> On 2/6/13, Elena Brescacin <[email protected]> wrote:
>> hi.
>> it would be good that all apps and games would be accessible for all.
>> But it's not always possible! I know a programming environment,
>> called Adobe Air, which is cross platform and is
cross-platform-inaccessible!
>> This means that, if you have a program running under windows, mac,
>> iOS... written in adobe air, it will not work with any screen reader
>> in the market! Air is graphics based, texts are images, so, goodbye
>> accessibility!
>> I know another game, "audio invaders", which uses a framework
>> specific for games, which does not support voiceover but developers
>> made some efforts to adapt the environment to blind people: something
>> works, something not, but effort must be appreciated.
>> Now I am talking to Mag Interactive, i don't know if you ever heard
>> about them. Ruzzle, and quiz cross.
>> They promised me to give the developers the project to adapt games to
>> accessibility but they can't be sure! Quiz Cross may be easier to
>> adapt, but ruzzle, for the way the game works, does not allow a blind
>> user to play! You have a grid with letters and you must compose words
>> by moving the letters, and you have 2 minutes. without taking the
>> finger away from the screen.
>> Voiceover reads the letters, but you have no way to drag them around
>> and, even if you increase the time, the concept of the game is very
>> difficult to adapt.
>> It's not a grid-based game such as sudoku or chess or tic tac toe,
>> this is a different mechanism.
>> I know my point of view cannot be accepted by all, but, I think we
>> must accept we cannot do everything and play with everything, we have
>> some limitations and not everything can be fully adapted.
>> I made the same mistake myself, getting angry with devs who made paid
>> apps without thinking of accessibility. But this is not the right way
>> to behave. even if the description could make us think it is
>> accessible because it's a game of words, or question/answer, and so
>> on, accessibility is not guaranteed. And games are not an everyday
>> essential part of our life so, even if accessibility is not
>> universally applied, a game does not work, try to get another. I
>> worry most about publicly useful apps such as timetables, public
>> transport maps, and so on. It's true, many famous game companies do
>> not develop accessible games but I found that iPhone and iPad have a
>> very large variety of games for all, which we couldn't even dream a
>> few years ago.
>>
>> ---
>> 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://mail.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].
>>
>
> ---
> 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://mail.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].
>
---
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://mail.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].
