Visually Impaired Gamer Sues SOE for Game Accommodations - AbleGamers Statement
The ADA was created to ensure equality for all disabled people across America. The document states that reasonable accommodations must be made for all disabled patriots to be able to access goods and services provided to the public.
Stern alleges many games make accessibility accommodations such as color options for the colorblind, voiceover dialogue for visually impaired, close caption for the deaf gamer, and content assistance (i.e. giant arrows pointing which way to go) for cognitively disabled gamer, but allegedly none of these enhancements enable him to play SOE titles. He also claims that Sony has hindered his financial situation because Sony allows the player base to sell in game items legally on their sanctioned website. The items he could have been gathering for himself, if the game was more designed for his specific disability, would have helped aid his income stream.
Many opponents to the ADA state that the document is too loose and allows anyone to demand unreasonable accommodations. In the past, some lawsuits have included wheelchair-bound employment seekers suing strip club owners for inaccessible stripping poles, and other absurd situations.
Proponents of the ADA cite accommodation such as wheelchair ramps on street corners, verbal cues at street crossings, and brail for common signs in public places like parks and zoos that would not have been in place without the legal document.
Even as the ADA nears its twentieth birthday, some still take objection to being forced into making accommodation for the disabled. While many disabled gamers, even members of AbleGamers, have had their lives enriched by the ADA, the real question is whether to risk this kind of backlash to the accessibility movement in gaming.
AbleGamers Stand
In today's society, we want everything given to us right now. Our staff would love to be able to contact every single game manufacturer and demand that they put in accessibility for every type of disability known to man, but we also know that is an unreal request.
The problem is that videogames are proprietary, private, and often considered intellectual property. Adding accessibility to the industry has been a voluntary effort by the gaming publishers, and so far, the pendulum has been swinging to adding increasingly more accessibility, allowing more to participate in the gaming market.
AbleGamers has been working with developers for the past five years to incorporate as much accessibility as possible to each and every videogame. However, it is important to remember that the gaming must come first and all other issues second. We are gamers who happen to be disabled and who need some small accommodations to help make gaming possible. We believe that going in speaking to the gaming companies, developers, producers, writers, directors, and everyone in between that actually makes the videogames and showing them that there is a variant community of avid gamers just waiting to hand over their money, is a far better way to move game accessibility forward.
Moreover, this is not about AbleGamers or what we feel we do very well. Although, AbleGamers has been directly responsible for helping multiple accessibility options to be placed into videogames, this situation is about the cause. Places like the IGDA, GDC, and other profit and nonprofit organizations helped push the cause of accessible gaming forward every single day by showing the positive aspects of the disabled people which represents 15 to 17% of the total population. However, while our and other organizations push the movement forward by speaking to the people directly responsible for making the games, lawsuits such as this can serve to severely distract from what we have been working so hard to do over the last decade as an overall cause, not just this organization.
Mark Barlet, president of the AbleGamers nonprofit foundation has been issuing the following statement to press organizations contacting AbleGamers for our take on the situation:
While I can understand this gentleman's frustration I do not believe that the courts are the place to forward accessibility in the gaming space. As a gamer, I want games to be fun for as many people as possible, but as a person with disabilities, I understand that there are limitations that I am going to face in life. This is the nature of having a disability. I think that this approach does little to endure our community and our mission to the gaming public, and this move may lower the willingness of content producers to work with organizations like AbleGamers in making reasonable changes to their games to help accommodate as many disabled gamers as possible for fear of legal action.
As you can see from the comments section in Gamespot, Evilavatar, Slashdot, and a dozen other popular gaming magazine sites have already begun to fill up with negative comments. One part of our job is to convince game developers that adding accessibility is not only the right thing to do, but profitable for them as well. This ensures that the people sitting in the boardrooms who make the decisions on what features to add will be more inclined to okay the accessibility options. However, the other part of our job, and by "our" I mean everyone fighting for the accessibility cause from nonprofit organizations like this one down to the individual blogs, is to help remove the stigma from adding accessibility.
We need non-disabled gamers to understand and support the accessibility movement. We need them to understand that adding options for accessibility will in no way harm the creativity of the developers or the fun of the game. Many of the comments on the articles linked above include people fearful or hateful about accessibility cramping the style of the game. It is imperative that the message coming from our movement of accessibility be that these options can be added without anyone who doesn't need them ever knowing that they even exist in any given title.
For some others take on the issue, read Suzanne over at Abledbody.com
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I disagree with your "a few accommodations that are not unreasonable" comments. I would agree with that if it were any other disability besides being blind. Video gamers are a visual media, they are by their very nature not friendly to the blind. I am not saying that I disagree with the desire to play the game, but as a disabled person myself I understand that disabilities do mean there are things I can not do. There are other visual things that I do not want my blind friends doing, like drive, fly airplanes, and preform open heart surgery. This is not a slight on any disabled people, it is a true understanding of reasonable accommodations.
This isn't about having sympathy for a multibillion dollar company. This is about abusing the system set in place to help the disabled, namely the ADA.
Let's look at it from a different standpoint, most likely the lawsuit is going to be shut down. Even if it's not right away, Sony will tie it up for years in court, and the fact that he adds in financial restraints says that he is not in it for greater accessibility, he wants a pay day.
Sony entertainment was one of the first ones to recognize AbleGamers as a legitimate nonprofit cause, long before we actually had the nonprofit title. Having said that, I despise what Sony does the most of their games, you can look up my personal opinion of what they did to Star Wars. I have no sympathy for them because they ruined several of the games I liked, nonetheless they are willing to work with us and have already added things we have asked for.
If Sony starts believing dealing with AbleGamers or any of the other organizations representing the accessible gaming movement will result in negative legal action - they will stop dealing with us.
I know it may not seem like it but honestly pointing a gun at someone doesn't make them want to be with you anymore, it just guarantees that they won't want to be with you in the future.
So let's be absolutely clear, we are not saying that the reasonable accommodations should not be made, they should, and the ones that already could be made easily have been done.
a lawsuit is not the right way to handle this, companies have to willingly put in accessibility and when they refuse, it is a dick move, but it's something people have to deal with.
especially if it's something like making a game accessible to people afflicted with blindness, which would be no small task.
something like this is going to start polarizing opinions and putting the decision making into the hands of people who have no context on any of it. which we'll all just regret in the end.
also @AbleMainstream
doing anything in games costs a good amount, and when it comes down to it they're concerned about the money. out of the people who play Sony games, how many do you think are blind or would be? and then with that number of possible customers would it offset the cost of making all their games accessible? to them it's always going to come down to a business call.
As a gamer who plays some of Sonys games have noticed the most of the options for the games are allready in place, you can make icon bigger and there is a waypoint arrow you can change the colour of the screen and make graphical changes.
I have a feeling this will fail, some of the game moders out there can create theses options for him if he wants all he had to was ask.
Why waste time and more money!!!
I am surprised to read the view that things are improving. From my selfish point of view things have gotten worse. Fonts keep getting smaller and harder to read. Companies are locking their games down further so editing an xml file a la Neverwinter Nights 2 is no longer an option. Complaints, questiosn and requests to offer a large font option even by non disabled gamers are ignored. (Heck, ncsoft removed the large font option under 800x600 from Guild Wars, and no amount of asking and trying to work with them could get it back.)
In the end companies are about the money, so perhaps when they realize not being reasonable will cost them cash can force some change.
I have to ask, is he already a current player of Everquest 2? If not then the entire thing starts to sound like a cash grab aimed at sueing SOE because he's missing out on an opportunity to sell in game items which I don't know but would doubt is profitable enough to support your monthly subscription let alone supplement your income.
Certainly the emphasis on the financial side of the suit can be seen as terribly damagaing to your cause which is an incredibly pity.
Because of security issues and copywrite issues games are becomeing much harder to mod. Even if someone had a system of modding a game to make it acsessable for the blind they often cant use it leagaly.
I think if this is done right it might be the kick up the backside alot of these companies need to make them put in the basic things other games have had in them for acsessability for years.
It also can go bad if the guys just after the money because it shows the desabled in a bad light.
Ether way it shows games companies about rules which they litealy arnt aware of. Many of these guys dont think about the desabled at all so this might actualy be a very good thing.
First off Everquest 2 is a very bad target for this kind of lawsuit, because there is NOTHING in the interface that can't be modded to fit your needs, and they actively support the interface modding community. Even including the same tool the developers use for creating interfaces with the game. They have even changed aspects of their default interface as a result of what is popular among modders. Also even with the default set-up you can increase the size of Icons and Text to very large sizes.
I recently touched on this whole issue in my blog. To echo what I said there, I think most people are attributing the wrong factor to why this case is pretty obviously doomed. Most people say it's because games developers don't have any legal obligation to make their products accessible, but I think it really has more to do with the fact that this guy is looking for some quick and easy cash. If his motivation didn't come off as so selfish, and instead he was simply seeking to have Sony et al. forced to make improvements to their products' accessibility, I think this suit would have a fighting chance. My argument for why is slightly rambly, so I won't flood this thread with it, but if you're interested you can see it here: http://blog.the-three.net/?p=395
Of course, I'm simply saying that attempting to force compliance would be legally viable. By no means do I think that it's a good idea or the right way to forward the accessibility movement. To the contrary, I have a feeling the negative fallout of this case could be huge.
