I think the only fix is to demonstrate a more effective method, hands down. These people are embarrassing, and I can't believe they represent such prominent positions. I feel like I would be roasted if I tried to explain what's so very wrong with this rhetoric. But I think it's the reason why accessibility has been so stagnant.

So much damn nipple twisting I swear to god

In an ideal world, we shouldn't have to pass laws that try to mandate including every one regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, or ability. It would just be automatic that everyone is thought of when designing products, services, and access to public places.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. So I try to recognize the things I can change, the things I can't, and most importantly, to know the difference between the two.

@1: Agreed.

Exacly. There's also certain groups of people in genres that absolutely kick and scream their genre of game must not, ever, be accessible because the real activity is not accessible,,,,which is asinine in many, many ways.

That being said, and I'm not aiming at anyone here but I do feel there's absolutely a section of disabled people who think the world owes them everything and act entitled andmilitant, for want of a better word.  whenever they perceive something isn't 'accessible' be it a real or imagined issue. If anything they are hurting legitimate concerns honestly.

@Joseph:

I have useful things to post and it may actually shed light on what I call the gaming snobs/assholes/idiots/elitists/etc. As I've said beore, I was involved with the original Project CARS, a mainstream racing simulator. Kep that genre in mind, it'll be important.

Nobody in the development process raised the question of accesibility beyond a driving/braking asssist that the 'hardcore' snobs turned their noses up at and asked why those were even in the sim to begin with, and when it was pointed out those were in to ease new people in, the response from the 'hardcore' crowd was basically, well, screw the new people.

Interestingly, one of the people arguing for assists was a disabled racing driver, who stated the sim needed to be acceissible, and I can't mention his name, but he drives in a one make series as of 2017, and he's a big gamer, but the 'hardcore' crowd basically had a shut the F up buddy, mentality and essentially ran him off the project for a while, and claimed that the racing sim gene didn't need to be accessible because real racing cars aren't disabled friendly.

To which, the disabled driver in question produced proof that disabled drivers were actually catered for in the rulebooks of several series, and showed that yes, there were disabled racing drivers. But still, that genre continues to be very hostile towards disabled racing gamers, I may dig out my old submission to a a forum if I ever find it listing my thoughts on making niche genres accessible to everybody.

Oh and one more thing on that front, several of the people screaming for less accesiblity had put thousands of dollars into the project, but the sim still shipped with assists in, though they were waatered down from what had oiginally been planned.

Now for the other bit of my post....

I think there's militant and aggressive people on both sides of the fence though and IMO developers don't want to deal with the hassle of it, I've heard disabism (as it's been called) equated to the antics of feminists in fighting for equality and frankly, that's a load of crap, I want equality but noot at the cost of crossing the line to get it. I'd rather have constructive discussions rather than fighting and bickering with people, and I do remember back in college, the fully blind kids (I had sight at the time) were acting very, very entitled and pushy and arrogant, as if they were somehow better...er...'better' than the kids with varying amounts of sight, and it was always over very, very petty stuff honestly,. I often wonder why various types of disabled people fight among each other then again, I'm not sure I want to know sometimes.

Ah I have my own axe to grind with the NFB, AFB, RNIB, BFB and so forth. I wasn't actually aware that the BFB was a thing, the British Federation for the BLind, or they used 'tactics' to get certain movies banned by screaming it'll demean blind people. Bonus points if you know the movie I'm specificially referiring to FWIW I watched a streamed version of that movie a while ago and took it for what it was, a good movie...no need to get all militant and basically speak for every blind user, as everyone is different honestly, after all we're all different on the forum, and I've actually got sources inside PCARS 2 who have told me nothing has changed re: making the game accessible friendly, but that things may improve in patches....then again, I said my views on the first game's developer forum, and got blasted for daring, DARING to say disabled people might pick up the game. Spoiler alert: I picked up the game, learned it, and had my fun with it.

Either way, you're right, you do attract more flies with honey, but shit attracts even more flies sadly and it does seem to me that there's a certain section that loves to go throwing said fecal matter around to impose their views on everyone else and screw whatever happens after that. It's stupid honestly, it's stpid that it's even a thing, but I do think the differing levels of blindness do play a part, somebody who is sighted has different needs (well....partially sighted I mean) than somebody who is fully blind or somebody who was rendered blind by, say, a car wreck or whatever, yet I also think society has  arole to play in this, in that they lump disabled people into one giant box and basically, as said, shove us away.

I'm honestly worried for Thursday, the election and what Corbin, if he gets in, will do to the welfare and benefits system here (I'm currently over the sheep happy side of the ocean....yay), but I also don't trust any of the other parties to increase benefit spending either, or to even cut my lifetime benefits to save money, despite them saying they won't, I don't trust the main political parites to turn around and then do that as a cost cutting measure.

Also, I do think hthe NFB/RNIB/etc attitudes need to change honestly, they need to get with the timesand update their teaching methods, I have family who are involved in education and I was told by relatives that the blind kids are still being taught Braille and told, paraphrasing, Braille is what you will be taught, you don't need computers. Though, that may only be regional, I'm not sure, I'd have to go around the country to check and find out....

Lastly, I do wonder why certain disabled people seem 'jealous' of other disabled people, I was at the first Invictus Games in London, and if things worked out I'd have gone to the Canadian ones, but I personally knew blind people who were crapping on the wounded and disabled servicemen and women for not being 'their' disabled, it made me physically ill. Is that how low people stoop, the 'you are not blind so don't talkk to me' attitude? I've heard it describe as blind racism, and I think that is a pretty apt description of it, though naturally it seems worse in certain corners of the internets.

I do enjoy the discourse going on in this topic, much more than I would ever get with those pretentious twitter feeds. holy goddamn

@ Dark - interesting insight.

I agree with your sentiment that the "literal disability" and the social perception of disabled pepole are two distinct entities.

It's almost as if people don't see it as a technical problem as you pointed out. A wheelchair would be beneficial for someone with motor disabilities but is inappropriate for a blind person. Likewise, a screenreader is inappropriate to a sighted wheelchair user.

In terms of economy, this is one of the most difficult things to actually address. However, we do live in an era of easily replicable software and residual income models, thus finally possibly opening the door to at least some improvements in accessibility through technology. In fact, at least in terms of blind accessibility, I think the right approach is to focus on software solutions that are compatible with mainstream stuff - aka the screenreader solution, but less outdated.

I disagree that accessibility is a moral right, although I agree in the moral basis of it. The weakness on arguing on morals is that morals are subjective, and oftentimes people will weigh out morals that they simply cannot implement. I highly doubt that most companies that don't implement accessibility are thinking that its somehow wrong to implement blind accessibility, but rather that they have to outweigh some things over others. Even in pure marxist models this decision has to be made at some point due to scarcity of development resources.

I instead argue a utilitarian argument since it's much more difficult to dismiss accessibility when you point out that you're literally paying for disabled people to just sit around and do nothing and wasting millions of dollars on a utility hole that exists in our society.

Thanks for piecing it together for me, it really does show how much of it is... very political indeed. I was naive to think that most people were genuinely interested in developing blind solutions. Morals are appealing to people because its an easy way to slap "good" or "bad" onto something without actually breaking apart what it is, at least in this case.

@Orko - They call you disabled because you are literally unable to do certain things, like I pointed out before. You literally cannot drive a car, or draw, ect. if you're blind. However, the main problem with the use of the word is not distinguishing between what makes something a literal "disability" and the social term for people who have many "literal disabilities". My philosophy is that if these literal disabilities are eliminated one by one, the social label of disability will fade away.

For example, I would also consider someone who can't drive because of emotional problems to also be disabled, because they are disabled at driving.

Of course this won't solve all the social issues with disability, but by normalizing the unbalance, it lowers the excuses that people can give to claim that disabled people are different.

I can't comment much on the NFB but at least they actually help people more than the self-sustaining UX companies do.

Speaking of which, I do wonder how much of the UX laziness is based on self sustaining business models rather than actually helping people, moreso than even the hardware companies. I notice that they have a lot of UX based events but usually only other UX people attend those, and they do very little to try to reform education standards to encourage UX based design among developers. I highly doubt the education situation has changed at all in the last 4 years since I was in college, although correct me if I'm wrong. Their business model thrives on guilt and fear of being sued, and it makes me sick.

I wonder how many of them even just experiment with a screenreader sometimes just to get used to it. Just seems like they're good at filling out alt tags and organizing information.

@DracoSelene - yeah I agree this is a huge problem and I think that the UX types feed right off of these people. Disabled people do have to take some level of responsibility for their situation and have to be understanding.

After all, at least in my case, I'm not blind so I can't consider every possible solution. Cooperation, not condemnation, is key.

@Joseph - Well, less mad and more concerned... the people I see on twitter really concern me due to their extremely high politicial nature. One even said that "Accessibilty IS political". No it's not you fuckwit, it's mainly technological. But these dipshits are the ones I need to appeal to since it's clear that my budget is going to be quite a bit higher for my game than yours and I really really REALLY need the press coverage. (speaking of which, any tips? lol)

Hahaha, it doesn't help that I'm generally utilitarian, but I promise that I argue this more on trying to actually gain technological traction on the issue. As I said to Dark, arguing on morality has a lot of flaws that doesn't really help find real solutions to the problems, just pointing fingers at people who do it "badly".

Yeah, I agree some people are total jerks in the disability community. Personally I don't give a shit since I develop these games out of my own enjoyment of them. But I think hostility compounds to the problem.

It's not hard to demonstrate why entertainment is pro-utilitarian - it reduces stress in individuals and provides them a means to rest without "burning themselves out". AKA it's directly tied to social ergonomics. Furthermore, video games and movies also serve as fantastic proofs-of-concepts for new technology. For example, 3D was once restricted to just video games and movies, but now is used heavily in medical equipment to help diagnose things like heart disorders . So while the purpose initially may be entertainment, which does have limited utility, it can eventually be adapted to more useful purposes, which I think in the case of video game accessibility is entirely possible. In fact, I think that the model I'm building/Aaron's model/a few others could be useful in non-disability applications related to low light or visibility.

The problem with morality though is that it offers little to no actual solution to solve the problem outside of labeling some people as bad and some people good based on their output on the issue, which is inappropriately labeling individuals who may not even be able to help out as "morally bad".

In all honesty, there is good and there is bad. My biggest concern is that their extremely political attitude towards the issue and moral-based arguments will alienate me in the movement and will discourage a paradigm shift that encourages accessibility development, and shut me down before I can even get to be successful. It's genuinely worrying.

I do believe there are plenty of people who are genuinely interested in the technology such as myself, but it's bloated with this 90's esque inclusivity model that adds to the whole "accessibility smell". I would point out that games like yours or mine are doing a far better job at actually pulling away from this problem though since they're potentially appealing to both blind and sighted audiences alike. However, UX people and people who design games for the disabled are two very different groups of people; it's just that UX types are the far more common group.

You're totally right. A lot of people don't give any consideration at all. Why should they, really? It's not really relevant to their lives (although I think as a UX designer you really SHOULD a tad). I really only care because I find the subject so fascinating. I genuinely enjoy exploring the world as a blind person, and thinking of ways to make it better. I would love to take a few days off just to try it out (if I could overcome my fear of potentially being exposed). So I'm certainly an exception to the rule. But even then I don't really fully know the blind experience since I'm not actually blind myself.

This kind of leads into one of the things I think is necessary for achieving quality accessibility - instead of a shotgun morality approach saying that "disabled people need accommodation", a more technical, fine tuned approach is needed. I don't think it should be my responsibility to accommodate other disabilities because my specialty is in blind accessibility and focusing on other forms of accessibility may dilute what I can contribute towards blind accessibility - rather, that someone who focuses on motor disability, or deafness, or cognitive disability, composes their own parts, and then they are overlayed together dependent ON the disability itself, through a portable and easy to implement API (relatively speaking). This specialization of work allows for the best possible solutions to be created while compiling it together in a portable API. This would, at least, improve software accessibility, and the approach may be adopted in physical models as well. We can hope at least.

I disagree with your evaluation of the utilitarian approach to the problem - by eliminating public services you then cause a huge gap, thus making blind people even less utilized than before, and costing society more through requiring families to support them or even forcing them to die alone. None of this actually benefits society when a wealth of untapped utility lies hidden underneath all these pepole, especially as our society's skills become more and more centered around technology.

I could see how someone uneducated on the matter could make that argument though, which is a major problem. doesn't help that people REEEEEEEEEE whenever they hear about utilitarianism because they think Peter Singer hates disabled people. (Yes, I actually contacted him to verify that his views are frequently misrepresented...)

JESUS FUCK. I can't believe a fucking UX designer said that. What an ignorant, arrogant retard. Do they not realize that blind gamers have been playing fighting games for years now?

He's also completely wrong. A lot of it depends on how you integrate it. The indie community who's learned about my game is shitting bricks over it because it's a game about colors that can be played BLIND. I use the accessibility engine in sighted mode to explore dark areas. It's called "having an original idea".

Ah, so the NFB is pushy with their ideals. I can't really speak out on the whole guide dog thing but one of the major problems with a guide dog is it sticks out even more than a white cane, which is not often considered. Plus, dogs require a lot more upkeep than a cane or technology. Dogs may actually be replaced in my lifetime, I wouldn't be surprised.

Like I said, "Disability" in my opinion should be focused on the literal interpretation of the term "disability". I know plenty of blind folk who can function independently, but I still consider them "disabled" less because of them but more because there are certain limitations on what they can do. Things like drawing are unimportant, but using an application is, so my whole philosophy is about reducing or eliminating disability through technology. So I would consider both of you disabled in the sense that you can't do some important things, but not in the sense that you aren't independent. Dependence is often implied by the term disability, which complicates the isuse.

The attitudes have only slightly changed because blind people are slightly more employable, but that "disability" that makes them less efficient I think is at least partially to blame for the social problem. Once this barrier is lifted I think blind people will be able to integrate easier.

While I keep myself out of politics, I think its fair to say that the government can be useful in some cases, such as enforcing building codes. However, like anything else, it's a tool, and it has a somewhat shotgun approach, so activists trying to change the law to do this or that are probably not helping anywhere near as much as the technology itself. If anything laws should be made to compliment accessibility but itself should not be addressed politically.

Eh, I don't really agree with "accessibility being the wrong idea" as long as its designed to equalize. For example disabled parking spots are there because the people have trouble walking usually and walking across a parking lot may be much more difficult for them than being closer. However I do think that a lot of the time it is abused, especially with this word policing nonsense.

UX = user experience

It refers to the businesses, individuals and organizations that help implement web accessibility usually, and sometimes application accessibility.

While I have issues with the NFB, the described incident is more or less the exact opposite of what I would expect from the typical NFB evangelist. I think maybe the NFB is not so homogeneous as one might think, what with having several thousand members all over the US.
I've heard the idea that maybe the wheelchairs-in-airports thing is for insurence purposes. You know, if a blind person is just capable enough to escape the obnoxious assisters but not enough to avoid causing an injury, resulting in the victim suing the airport instead of the blind person, because America.
Also I dismissed the "it'll be faster" argument when the guy who stood beside me yelling "left! right! left! straight!" the whole time also said "slow down!"  But in their defense, they had only seen me get off the plane when offering wheelchairs. In my defense, they'd just seen me get off the plane. (Dallas. It's always Dallas.)

The sqaueay wheel gets the grease, even though I feel like we need a more versatile metaphore so I can do something witty with it...

Fair enough.