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Disabled Fans Shut Out of Galaxies
Ant writes "Wired News' Game|Life reports on Nick Dupree, a disability rights activist and writer who is confined to a wheelchair with severely limited mobility. He used to use one thumb and an index finger to play MMORPG Star Wars: Galaxies. This limited mobility was more than adequate to play the game when it was a sandbox-style adventure, and he was a devotee of the game. With the New Game Enhancements, he is no longer able to play because of the reliance on keyboard/mouse combinations and the action-style combat." There really is nothing good to report on this game update.
I think that one of the great things about technology is that it is the great equalizer. As technology advances, fewer and fewer people will have to live with a "disabled" status since we can build machines to help them.
If I were disabled, I would spend all day's in the MMORPGs. I can only imagine how liberating it would be to be equal with everybody else, and not have people immediately take pity on you upon sight. This man, who now has lost his access to this world that had once been a major part of his life, has my sympathies, and I urge the galaxies people to find out a way to accommodate him.
I really think you're missing the point here. The old setup of SWG was not a "sandbox-style adventure" for reasons of political correctness, but instead to favor strategy and precise action over frenetic action.
I don't see how he's missing the point. As you say, the original game wasn't designed that way specifically for disabled access and, as you presumably realise, the changes weren't made specifically to remove that access. Criticising the game changes is valid. Using some disabled rights angle as an excuse to bash the game providers is really offensive.
If you don't believe that they are allowed to change their game then say so. If you believe that they are then sometimes those changes are going to affect players that they don't even know about.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Well, what you say is true, in a sense. For one thing, there are of course visual art programs that blind people are unlikely to be interested in. There's little or no point in making those accessible to THOSE disabled users.
If it happens that other disabled users WANT to use it however, and have some difficulties due to design, then that should obviously be fixed. The article is about dexterity issues, which can easily be solved by allowing different input methods, as an older version did.
The big issue though, is that people simply being dismissive of disabled users' needs. There is absolutely no reason why, if a user (disabled or not) wants to be able to control a piece of software, that input methods cannot be devised to allow this. So, when I say all programs, I mean all programs that disabled users might want to use, but that IS much closer to ALL programs than a handful, and I really think we need to think of accessibility as a default, rather than an exception.
On high-contrast, high-feedback, low-skill, etc... Again, if a user wants to play such a game, they are likely to believe that they could do it, if the input and feedback only suited them. This could easily be catered for with different UI modes, tilesets, etc. Most user interfaces, even in games, are becoming much more dynamic, using scalable graphics and high-level input APIs rather than bitmaps and raw joystick access. So it's definitely doable. And, yes, I think any cost involved in that extra mode should be part of the overall cost for all members of society who play the game. We're all in this social thing together.
Both SWG and EQ have had some serious screwups, and about the only way to make the games fun again involves using a time machine.