So I wanted to see what the community thought of this.

Here is what the visual impaired gamer alleges.

1. SOE will not do what he asks them to do so he can play
2. SOE does not do ANYTHING for disabled gamers
3. He is losing money because he can not farm for items.

If you are a glutton for punishment, like I am, you can read the court papers he filed right here

www.scribd.com/doc/22257985/Stern-v-Sony

Now here is the issue if you ask me. SOE has made changes to games for the disabled. EQ2 and SWG have been played by many many gamers here on this site. So is main argument is false. What may be true is that SOE has not made a the games for HIM to play...

The other issue, and this is what I want to ask the community, is EQ2 or WAR or WOW a place of public accommodation? I say it is not, what do you think?

I think everybody already knows how I feel but I am going to say that reading the actual document is amazing. I cannot understand why someone would try to say that no disabled gamers are able to play EverQuest 2. Not only because of the work that AbleGamers does but because he relies on the fact that third parties have created accessibility mods for other games but not that one and that is Sony's fault.

For those of you who will read this and not know what goes on behind the scenes, I was accused by one guy of being pro-Sony and hating the ADA. that couldn't be farther from the truth. As someone who uses a wheelchair, I'm a big supporter of the ADA but this lawsuit is just ridiculous.

There are so many other avenues this guy had, including contacting AbleGamers. He committed e-mailed the public relations department, or sent in a complaint.

Granted, Sony dropped the ball by thanking him for the complement of the graphics. In addition, I can't stand what Sony did to many of the games that I love, I also couldn't play EverQuest, which is the only game that I could not play as someone with mobility impairments 10 years ago.

It doesn't matter to me that I don't like some of the choices they have made due to some other games, or that I couldn't play one other games. There is no reason to sue a company for accessibility. And if Sony no longer wants to talk to us, IGDA, or anyone else behind the accessibility cause because one guy decided he could get a quick payday, I will truly be sad.

It's so important to remember that there is often a right way and a wrong way to get things done. Even if suing a company to force them into adding accessibility, is that really the way we want to advance the cause?

I was in college when the ADA was passed, and I was very glad to see accessibility for the disabled coming to the forefront. What made me angry very quickly was the number of frivolous lawsuits from people that wanted to make a living off of businesses that, if asked to do the right thing, probably would, especially if it was not too expensive to do so. I also saw the backlash against the perception that disabled people could ask for anything, and if they didn't get it, they would sue.
A good example of where awareness and advocacy have worked is with World of Warcraft. Through dialogue with AbleGamers and interaction with its customers, Blizzard has found ways to improve the accessibility to colorblind gamers and those with visual discrimination deficits. Was their motivation to help disabled gamers out, or was it to attract more subscribers to the game? I can guarantee it was the latter, but we still win.
I would agree with Ioo that online games are not places of public accomodation. If the court upholds that part of the complaint, it will be a sad day indeed.

I feel inclined to be the devil's advocate on this one, up to a point anyway.

You could argue that after a customer has made several attempts to get some minor technical changes made to a specific game he/she owns and the company is unwilling to think/work with the person in question. Ofering a refund would be the next step. usually any game that requires some kind of activation cannot be returned once that is done. There is no demo for every game out there, so you can only find out it will not work once it is too late.

If they still refuse to be reasonable there comes a point where you could use the legal system and laws in place to force some compliance. Provided the requests are reasonable/doable. Anyone owning an xbox 360 should be able to relate to that regarding the RROD/scratched games debacle. We only got the extended warenty after microsoft was semi forced.

As I said before, companies are about profits. So there is something to be said about hurting them in the wallet. Where I disagree with this person is the (Imho absurd/silly) lost income. I could have lived with a demand that said "look seriously into what can be done and do it or give the custoemr back his/her money+legal expenses. Fail to do so and there will be a fine."

OT In all fairness, I had never heard of this place before The Reg mentioned it in their article about this case either. SO I can understand why he would not have come here first.

no doubt, one of AbleGamers biggest problems is getting recognition but that's not want us talking about here.

If you read the actual suit itself, it says that Sony has never added anything to accessibility, that no one who is disabled to play any other videogames, particularly ever quest 2, and that Sony allows you to sell your in game currency - which the people who play the game are the most baffled that because they say it is hogwash.

I think it is particularly frustrating for us because we work so hard to walk the line between bullying and being aggressive, then this guy goes and get lawyers involved. There is just no point.

Oh I agree that his specific claim is less than wise.
On the other hand, you could say that it has at least opened up the debate on a wider scale.