AbleGamers Reviews Games From a Disability Standpoint

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."

Comments

Good news

[azior]

I know a game for people with a handicap: golfing

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

Sueing?

[tsa]

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.

Re:Sueing?

[dingen]

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.

Just started to look at their site

[Gadget_Guy]

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.

Re:The equivalent...

[ynohoo]

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.

Perhaps It's The Geek Who Is In Denial

[westlake]

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.

Accessibility Ratings? Good. Lawsuit? No.

[KermodeBear]

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.

Re:Accessibility Ratings? Good. Lawsuit? No.

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:The equivalent...

[dintlu]

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.