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AbleGamers Reviews Games From a Disability Standpoint

Posted by Soulskill on from the gaming-for-all dept.

eldavojohn writes "Early last month a visually impaired gamer sued Sony under the Americans with Disabilities Act (and if you think that people with disabilities don't play games, think again). The AbleGamers Foundation has decided to step forward and provide a rating system for games that blends together a number of factors to determine a score with regard to accessibility. Visual, hearing, motion, closed captioning, speed settings, difficulty settings and even colorblindness options are all taken into account when compiling these scores and reviewing these games."

23 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Good news by azior · · Score: 4, Funny

    I know a game for people with a handicap: golfing

    On a serious note: this is good news, gaming/entertainment could get really mature

  2. Sueing? by tsa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't sueing Sony because you can't play a game because you're visually impaired the same as, say, sueing Warner Brothers because you can't watch the Harry Potter movies? You can't expect people, and especially corporations, to cater to every type of handicap in a single product.

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    -- Cheers!

    1. Re:Sueing? by agnosticnixie · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can make movies accessible to the blind actually. It's called descriptive audio.

    2. Re:Sueing? by dingen · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's why DVD's come with an extra audio track which contains "audio description". It's basically a voice telling you what is happening on the screen, making the movie accessible to both the blind and people who can't watch the screen for some other reason (walk to the kitchen, driving in a car, etc).

      In the UK, it's very common to have this audio description track available on TV as well. The law mandates that at least 10% of all prime time television has audio description included, but in practice a lot more than 10% of the shows include this.

      Some cinema's also offer audio description through an ear piece, which blind people can pick up at the ticket booth. That way the blind and non-blind can enjoy a movie together in the same theater.

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      Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    3. Re:Sueing? by deep2k · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm colourblind (deuteranope) and I can't play Gears of War because I can't see the ammo on the ground. An in-game option would have ensured my purchase...

    4. Re:Sueing? by dingen · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, really. In the Netherlands this is not a widely known technique, but it has been used on some films. DVD's which are available with audio description (as far as I know of) include Blind, Zwartboek, De Storm, Oorlogswinter and Bride Flight.

      A few cinema's, including CineMec in Ede and City in Utrecht have shown these films with audio description available through an ear piece.

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      Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    5. Re:Sueing? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's been around a lot longer than Southpark. I remember back in the early '90s the BBC ran a small-scale trial where they encoded a descriptive audio track in the flyback period (replacing teletext, I think, but possibly in some of the unused parts) so that blind people could 'watch' TV shows. As I recall, they also suggested that it would be useful for people hiding behind the sofa while watching Doctor Who (which should give you some idea of how long ago it was).

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:Sueing? by yuna49 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have a mild red/green color blindness and find some games with color codings difficult to navigate. I had an especially hard time distinguishing the green and yellow elements in Chrono Cross where color is a primary component of the game play.

    7. Re:Sueing? by Your.Master · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Let me tell you, until you've watched the Imagination-land part 1 episode in descriptive video, you have NEVER truly seen South Park.

      Sadly, parts 2 and 3 were done with a different voice actor who seems to be a moron whose writer wasn't paying attention. But the first one is fan-bloody-tastic.

  3. Just started to look at their site by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have just started to look at their site and the first thing that I notice as the page was loading was that the pictures that you click on near the top to go to choose the platform all have the same alt text of "xbox reviews". That will be confusing for someone using a screen reader.

    I thought the whole layout seemed a bit complicated and confusing, with javascript menus and a very busy interface. Gray text on a gray background seems an odd choice for the color blind people out there.

    Still, at least they are raising public awareness. Even if you don't think that game makers should HAVE to provide support for all disabilities, this kind of site fills in the role that most game reviewers would not consider.

  4. Website by Idiomatick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They don't seem to have a very accessible website. Quick glance of their code didn't show any css for the blind. And the big sliding image thing in the middle doesn't look very accessible either.

    1. Re:Website by dingen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Blind people don't need special CSS. As long as a website's markup is proper, semantic, standard-compliant (X)HTML, the screen reader won't have any problems parsing it.

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      Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    2. Re:Website by Ablegamers · · Score: 2, Informative

      For the record, the site has a screenreader side. You can see the code for the screen read users at the top at the start of the body. http://ablegamers.com/?template=beez it is not perfect but it is far better than the main site and we have loads of blind readers that say it is okay. We also have all the content converted into audio format for consumption on a iPod or other device. http://ablegamers.com/audio-ablegamers/AbleGamers-in-Your-Ear.html We also understand that our target demographic is not the totally blind gamer...

  5. This is not the article you're looking for. by Psaakyrn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Offtopic. Your issue is relevant for that other topic about the sight-disabled suing Sony (which we already had a lengthy discussion about, and linked in the topic itself), but this is about giving ratings to games based on specific disabilities, which is a much better alternative.

  6. Re:The equivalent... by ynohoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sometimes it as as simple as subtle changes during the planning phase. As someone whose hands shake too much for FPS and RTS, I was happy enough with TBS and Adventure games. So I was happily playing Myst 4, only to discover the designers had decided that a couple of puzzles weren't hard enough (vibrating crystal puzzle & monkey puzzle), so they had stuck timers on them! Could you disable or adjust the timer? No, sorry shaky hand player, game over.

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    need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
  7. Perhaps It's The Geek Who Is In Denial by westlake · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Instead of suing and getting angry at the world, this guy should just have the serenity to accept the things that he can't change and move on with his life.

    But there can be change - and the law and the lawsuit often makes it happen.

    Closed captioning and subtitles have become so much a part of home video that their absence - in a Netflix stream, for example - comes as a surprise.

  8. Accessibility Ratings? Good. Lawsuit? No. by KermodeBear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suffer from very strong red/green color blindness, which can be very problematic for me in some games. I was happy to see that L4D, and L4D2 include a 'color blindness' option that change some of the colors in the game so that they are easier for me to see.

    Having a ratings system, even if it isn't an official one, is a nice idea.

    The lawsuit though... Not so much. I don't see any legal basis for it. Someone with no legs shouldn't sue Ford because it is hard to drive.

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    Love sees no species.
    1. Re:Accessibility Ratings? Good. Lawsuit? No. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That really surprises me. Testing for red-green colour blindness issues is one of the standard things that you do when designing a graphical user interface. It's easy; on most platforms you can map the red and green channels together so you get a rough idea of how our UI will look to colour blind people before you even send it off for testing (and there are a number of automated tests you can run for other common forms of colour perception problems). These affect so many people that if you sell more than ten copies of your program you're likely to have at least one user who will complain if you don't. I'm astonished that it isn't a part of the testing process for games.

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Accessibility Ratings? Good. Lawsuit? No. by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's how I found out. People thought I was kidding when I said I couldn't read the ishihara tests.

      It's a bitch of a disability too, I've had many job opportunities pulled from me because of it, and the misunderstanding of what color blindness actually is.

      Why is that a problem? Because the government doesn't consider color blindness a real disability. Increasing numbers of jobs tack on 'normal color vision' into their job descriptions because some person up the chain thought it would be a good thing to toss in.

      I once had to fight for my job as a test engineer because I worked with aircraft. Naturally the government decided that since it dealt with aircraft, you had to have normal color vision. Because you know how important color vision is when testing god damned communication links.

      I had to go to vision specialists to 'prove' that I could do my job. It took 2 months to get everything sorted out.

      Too many people don't understand what this disability is, and think it is ok to just slap the 'normal color vision' requirement into a job without actually considering what that means.

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  9. This is absolute nonesense by executivechaos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're blind...guess what? You're never doing to drive a car. End of story.

    If you have no legs or can't walk, you're never going to learn karate and becoming a kickboxing champion. End of story
    There are certain things, of course yes we can make more accessible to the disabled, but I'm sorry, gaming is NOT one of them. A recreation that refines split second reflex and hand eye coordination SHOULD NOT BE MUCKED UP so someone with fucking parkinsons can play it 'easier'.
    If you have Parkinson? Sorry you simply can play games that require a steady refined hand. END OF STORY.
    I know im going to get modded as troll / flamebait but i am SICK TO DEATH of people who are PHYSICALLY LIMITED EXPECTING TO BE ABLE TO DO THINGS AS IF THEY ARE NOT: REALITY CHECK, YOU CAN'T AND YOU NEVER WILL, DEAL WITH IT

    1. Re:This is absolute nonesense by ph0rk · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't ever tell me what I can't do!

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      semantics are everything!
  10. Learn from the example of the UK by Squiff · · Score: 2, Informative

    In the UK we have the Disability Discrimination Act (‘DDA’) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_Discrimination_Act_1995 ) This requires that service providers do not provide a disabled person with a lesser degree of service than a person who is not disabled and that they make reasonable adjustments to facilitate this. Any public website based in the UK would be bound by this legislation. Cases are heard in a criminal court with a jury. Statute law does not define what constitutes a disability or a reasonable adjustment, the courts decide this on a case by case basis. A common prejudice is that people think of disabilities, first as someone in a wheelchair and maybe secondly of a blind person. A disability may in fact be mental, ‘invisible’ (e.g. epilepsy) or in fact any chronic condition that disables someone. The comment “Someone with no legs shouldn't sue Ford because it is hard to drive.” is not relevant because Ford do provide cars that may be driven by someone with no legs- certainly an automatic with hand controls is available in the UK. The linked article specifically mentions ‘World of Warcraft’ which for the terms of the DDA is a web-based business operating in the UK. There is a very clear precedent here with Odeon Cinemas (a UK chain) not providing a website that was accessible with alternative browsers: before http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39124215,00.htm and after http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/accessibility/ The alternative of course would be to not do business in the UK

  11. Re:The equivalent... by dintlu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think a part of the reason developers ignore the challenges disabled gamers face is because there are so many different types of disability, each of which raises very specific challenges that a non-disabled developer might not have the time or inclination to understand and work around.

    When you add that to the normal considerations - storyline objectives, gameplay objectives, internal politics, budgetary concerns, etc., it's not surprising that the disabled are completely marginalized and occasionally screwed by silly decisions like the one you've described.

    I think if the disabled want games to have a "mode" of gameplay specifically for them, they need to demonstrate that they are a viable market whose demands are easily met. The gaming review site is excellent - it raises awareness, but disabled gamers might be better off soliciting the ADA or some other organization to set up a system for determining a game's viability for different types of disabled gamers, ultimately placing a label on the packaging with this information.