TO Game Developers, From Gamers with Accessibility Needs:

gavinruneblade

aandrethegiant wrote: »

Wow that's really awesome stuff Gavinruneblade! I think I'll address that one, thanks for the tip.

Ok glad you got it! My control panel is still saying I've never sent you a message. Heh.

aandrethegiant

gavinruneblade wrote: »

Ok glad you got it! My control panel is still saying I've never sent you a message. Heh.

Yep, as long as you only sent me one email.. I got it Thank you very much.

aandrethegiant

Now an amputee at 68 years old, guitar great Leslie West has had to find a new way to be heard. The man has beat obesity (he was over 450lbs), beat cancer, cleaned up after years of heavy drug use, beat smoking, beat life threatening infection (would have been dead within 24 hours) but cost him his leg, and now living his life as a diabetic. He could have quit. He could have given up on life (in fact, he thought about it... wrote a song about it instead.) Leslie has found a way to persevere. If Leslie West can do it, I'd like to think we can ALL give it a go...

VIDEO: LONG RED

The whole goal of THIS THREAD - is to find new ways, to enjoy what we love to do best. It's that simple.

truelokaster

xabersedge wrote: »

I would like to request this thread for a sticky, if I may. I believe this is one that should not fall away.

Agreed. I found this one browsing and this one should definitely be a sticky.

minotaur2857

I'm rather shocked that some of these issues ever make it into games these days. I'm involved in a project writing a MMO atm. One of the first threads on our forums was the "What do we need to think about for accessibility" one, and colourblindness came up VERY early on along with remapping the keyboard and controls.

rhoric

The reason why this is still an issue in games, is the companies cater to the younger crowds which they don't see as having disabilities. They forget about the older crowd who are a big part of games. I am 42 and have been playing MMOs for 13 years. They also forget get that due to the recent conflicts over seas that our younger crowds serve over seas and are getting injured and are losing the ability to play the games they loved. Companies have to all get on board and stop this trend and stop forgetting about one of their biggest following which are our disabled players.

aandrethegiant

Thanks to all those for reading this thread & speaking up. It's clear there's a need, and maybe, just maybe it can help make Neverwinter a better game, even if it just provides more options for the player, to play the game.

Best way to help? Read the thread, and post your opinion. That alone will further this cause. To take it a step further? That's easy. To gain information on gaming with disabilities, the Ablegamers community forum cannot be beat. To best help Keith, and others with MD, he states to head on over to Muscular Dystrophy Canada and donate. If you ask me, more noble deeds would be hard to come by.

gavinruneblade

minotaur2857 wrote: »

I'm rather shocked that some of these issues ever make it into games these days. I'm involved in a project writing a MMO atm. One of the first threads on our forums was the "What do we need to think about for accessibility" one, and colourblindness came up VERY early on along with remapping the keyboard and controls.

Part of my work is doing staffing for government IT services. It's amazing to me that so many developers and web developers have no experience with it. The US Federal Government created something called "Section 508 compliance" which basically comes down to "make sure a colorblind person can read everything, and that a blind person using a text tool to read the web pages is able to access all the text on the page". An even though most of that just comes down to good design and development work, I'm constantly telling people they're not qualified for a position because they've never done it even with 10+ years experience.

It should be a part of every user interface design, but amazingly it just is not.

sadist

aandrethegiant wrote: »

Here's a pic of the Revoltec Fightpad. Pretty snazzy, huh folks!?

That thing is OP.. NERF IT! jk

aandrethegiant

Ablegamers officially responds to our cause. Steve Spohn is the Editor-in-Chief of AbleGamers & Outreach Chair for the Foundation. He is an expert in gaming with disabilities and assistive technologies and can be seen on MSNBC, CNN, G4 and more.

Hi Aandre,

Thanks for reaching out. I'm glad to hear you're having success with NWO. Truthfully, we were shown a demo in Boston and I was extremely disappointed with the accessibility, feel free to quote me on that. So anything they do would be an improvement.

Great job with the video and feel free to use any of our links that may be helpful in your argument. Also, I would suggest including Includification, a free 50 page how-to guide for developers on making video games as accessible as possible.

Steve Spohn
AbleGamers Editor-in-Chief
COO/Community Outreach Director
steve@ablegamers.com

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