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."

Re:Sueing?

[agnosticnixie]

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

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.

Re:Sueing?

[dingen]

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.

Re:Sueing?

[TheRaven64]

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).

Learn from the example of the UK

[Squiff]

In the UK we have the Disability Discrimination Act (‘DDA’) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_Discrimination_Act_1995 [wikipedia.org] ) 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 [silicon.com] and after http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/accessibility/ [odeon.co.uk] The alternative of course would be to not do business in the UK

Re:Website

[Ablegamers]

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 [ablegamers.com] 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 [ablegamers.com] We also understand that our target demographic is not the totally blind gamer...