Hello Liam, when companies or people from companies begin stating that it is financially unreasonable to add accessibility to a given product often it shows a lack of awareness on their part how cheap some solutions to the problem really are. In terms of cost they pay more for marketing the product then they would to add some 3D environmental effects, some spoken feedback here and there, or a simple targeting beep, etc.... It is even cheaper if they make it a core part of their game engines which can be reused in multiple products. Often I associate the real problem is most sighted people don't have a clue what a blind gamer needs. They have a misconception that a solution must cost millions of dollars, many hours of research, and countless hours of development. When some quick accessibility solutions would cost a fraction of that. Yet they see blind gamer, and they exadurate the cost and time it would take to carry it out. Another way of looking at this is the general sighted stereo type of people with visual handicaps. They often overlook the obvious solutions to a problem, and make blindness to be so hard to deal with, and the solution must be something complicated to them. Here is an example of this. While attending college at WSU I often would get stopped by fellow college students when I attempted to cross the street heading to my dorm. They would grab me or yell at me I was about to step in to the street, and some would come over offering to lead me across the street. Of course I knew where I was and what I was doing, but they didn't think I did for some reason. I would have to spend a minute or two explaining I knew what I was doing, and often they still had doubts I was able to handle myself around a street. In other cases I would be standing on a corner and someone would tell me don't walk the light is red. I would reply I knew that already, and they would ask how I would know the light was red if I couldn't see it. I would then mention that I listen to traffic, and walk when the parallel traffic is moving. If the car is parked at the light I wait until it starts moving. They would then make some comment on the par of "I didn't think about that," or, "I didn't know you could do that." In short those blind students had made some false and erroneous assumptions that since I was blind I didn't know my way around the college grounds. They had further assumed I couldn't tell if a light was red or green, and never thought about the fact a person can here the traffic moving, and deduct if it is safe to cross or not. In fact, they often ignored the fact I got from my starting point to the place where I met up with them with no problem, and didn't ask themselves how I got to be in that location in the first place. Lots of simple answers were overlooked do to false and erroneous assumptions. In the same way I can see some game companies looking at this accessibility thing in the same way. Lots of false and erroneous assumptions are made what it would cost, take to make it accessible, how much research do they need, etc.... If the common sighted person assumes a person with a visual handicap can't cross the street safely on his own, can't use judgement to figure out if a light is red or green, how can we expect those same sighted people to know or understand what is required to make a game accessible to us? Answer is in education. We need to promote accessibility education, and show them techniques and some code on how to make games accessible. Only then will we dispell erroneous assumptions and get down to real facts about how much research, time, money, etc is needed.
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