2019-07-11 21:53:13 (edited by frastlin 2019-07-14 15:27:38)

This was just posted by the developer of Crafting Kingdom and it is an instance of what you may think is helping really doesn't help with accessibility. If you are one of those 1-star ratings, please delete your review, as the accessibility mode is still in the works and you are hurting the financial success of the company who is expending lots of effort on a market that is not very big. If you find this behavior upsetting, and want to encourage the developers to keep building accessibility, please post a comment on the developer's blog in support of the accessibility mode coming out. Don't punch them in the pocketbooks if they are working on the nonvisual mode. Here is the post.

2019-07-11 22:18:09

And that, is what Has become of our comunity lately...
Let’s try and change this, shall we?!

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.
Carl Sagan

2019-07-11 22:25:48 (edited by Ethin 2019-07-11 22:29:03)

The entire issue this post speaks of is blind people once again demonstrating (1) their entitlement issue ("I want it accessible, and you'll make it accessible right now or else!"), and (2) arrogance to an extreme. Its utterly ridiculous; whichever people (either on this forum or elsewhere) who were doing this, go become a programmer, download EZquake or some visual-extreme games sourcecode, and then watch as I demand you to make it accessible with the snap of your fingers over and over. That'd piss you off, right? Well, I won't stop; next I'll start giving you 1 star reviews (or even 0 stars if its allowed) and making your accessibility port be the most unpopular thing on the forum.
That is exactly what you guys are doing to this development group. You are deliberately hindering something they have started on their own initiative, showing your entitlement and arrogance and demanding shit that you have no right to in the first place (accessibility is a privilege in this market, not a right, you know), and you are putting this group off majorly. Stop!
The fact that even the production manager said that these guys should "stop making these games accessible" is certainly horrifying to me, and if you know what's good for you, you'll let these guys take their time! As someone who actually develops software on my own time, and who has made things like GTA trainers accessible, I can tell you that making anything like a game accessible is not easy at all. Not even close. There's no magic bullet here, despite what you may think; and your instant gratification entitlement is going to destroy something this forum (and various members on it who go to GDC) has worked for since its inception.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-11 22:52:35

what the f.
Now i'll put a 1 star review, but i will change it once it gets accessible?
Man are you fucking serious?
If you people will act like this, you'll get nothing.
If this team eventually seas this topic and my post, i wish you good luck people, keep your work up!
especially, this part of the post got me really really interested in the game:
an ingame screenshot of the game showing a desert planet surface with many houses, farms, storage and mining buildings.
If this game is what i think, i'd really like to play it!
Once again, good luck to yall devs!

2019-07-11 22:55:55 (edited by defender 2019-07-11 22:58:03)

Wow that's, really shitty to hear that her company is now soured on accessibility and I'm very sorry people were so impatient!
OP  Please, please post this to applevis and let the staff know how important it is so they might highlight it in a blog post. and put it in the comments for crafting kingdom, in a review on Galactic Colonies in the app store as well if you can ETC.
Blind Bargains, Access World, Top Tech Tidbits, and blackscreengaming may also be interested.  Let me know if you want help spreading it.


I never saw it my self, but I wonder if the beta testers were informed about the accessibility coming later, or if it wasn't communicated to them properly.  That could maybe explain it somewhat, at least until it was clarified...


I'm going to go leave a positive comment on that blog and I hope you guys do too.  Maybe we can convince them it was a minority of people who don't represent us who did this, and help turn around the damage a bit.

2019-07-11 23:06:48 (edited by Still_Standing 2019-07-11 23:07:31)

that's what you get for  being  impatient, no more games, haha
i honestly do not play these games much, so i don't cair too much about what happeneds heare

And as anyone who's gone mountain climbing knows ,The serene snow-covered peaks that look so tranquil from a bdistance, Are the deadliest
sound is my vision
i rarely check my private messages on the forum, so if you want to contact me please use my email, or dm me  at oussama40121 on tw

2019-07-11 23:20:14

I'll probably like it; I loved castaways and Swamp for a while, so this game just might catch my interest.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-11 23:31:00 (edited by flackers 2019-07-11 23:33:37)

Ethin, I'm at the point now where I think you're indulging in a subtle form of trolling. I'm blind, you're blind, and so are lots of people on here, and we wouldn't leave a bitter 1 star rating on something like that. Why aren't we just as representative of the blind community? There are plenty of spoiled brats in the sighted realm. It's a maturity thing, not a blind thing. For God sake will you stop maligning blind people. Does what one member of a minority do, define the entire group? You're supposed to be a smart guy, yet you keep indulging in this lazy brainless stereotyping.

2019-07-11 23:51:03

Hello,
It's true that what has a few people did does not mean all blind people think this way. But as we see from the above blog post, this kind of atitude has discurreged some of the development team. Shame on those who posted such impatient comments and lowered the rating of the app.

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I usually post game recordings to anyaudio. Click here to visit my anyaudio page

2019-07-12 00:02:21 (edited by Stormy 2019-07-12 00:05:01)

This is extremely frustrating. It's also hard for me to wrap my head around. when we have such a desire for more developers to try their hand at making their games accessible, why do we treat them this way? I'm very interested to hear from someone who actually believes that behaving this way towards developers is a solution. I just want to understand the thought process. I could understand where someone would be coming from if this developer refused to consider making their game accessible. I wouldn't agree with leaving them bad reviews and sending awful emails even in that situation, but I could understand it. This developer though seems to have a strong desire to make their game as playable as possible, so why treat them so horribly? This seems like the type of post that would be made from within this community, so the fact that it's coming from an actual developer makes it even worse. How many developers do you think would be enthusiastic about building accessibility into their games after seeing something like this?


P.S. I don't think I've ever actually left a review for an app in my entire life. Maybe I should leave good ones for the apps I enjoy. If I don't care for an app, I just don't use it.

Trying to free my mind before the end of the world.

2019-07-12 00:30:16

Thank you very much for putting this here and highlighting it, it's really important.
This upsets me that people will go this low. I wish people would actually think about their actions and their words when it comes to stuff like this, otherwise we risk losing devs.

2019-07-12 00:30:36

"accessibility" gets thrown around too often, and I can't necessarily feel for companies who say that they have made their apps accessible, whether on the web or on mobile devices until I've used them. Simply put, there are companies (generally the bigger ones) that just don't get it. Like, they say that their in-house custom-built apps are accessible, meanwhile they never have put their sites through, nor have ever heard of
a WCAG audit.
A huge misconception I've encountered is that when companies refer to accessibility, they like to use "ADA," not WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Just because screen readers can read webpages doesn't mean the webpage is accessible. It just means that screen readers can read the webpage. Nevermind the folks who use selective switches or magnification applications, screen reader users are in it for themselves, and when they can read webpages, they say it's accessible. That sounds harsher than what I intended to go for, why would we as screen reader users give such regard to other assistive technologies we don't use and have no clue how they operate? So my point here is that there is a literal definition for "accessible," it's just not enforced because the Internet is a vast space.
This is quite different from iOS app accessibility, but the fact remains that companies just don't know what it really means to be accessible, even when you talk to them about it. Some use validation tools that haven't been updated in ages, and I would strongly question the legitimacy of such tools.
Now, is it possible this company is doing what it needs to do in order to become accessible? I don't know. None of us will until they announce the "accessibility" release.
More to the heart of this topic, I've seen plenty of blind folks enraged by inaccessible apps/websites. I know how frustrating it is. That's just how it goes for us as blind people. The issue is how that frustration is handled, and people handle it the wrong way. I can't say anything more to be useful on this topic other than I get the headache or even heartbreak when something doesn't work with my AT, and I would love for it to work for me in the future. I think it's the jerks described in post 1 that get the attention in accessibility (sadly), not that it's the general behavior of blind people. Is this an exception? I can't say, but I do know a handful of blind people who behave similarly. We get ourselves in trouble when we try to attribute qualities to the general without giving regard to what the general actually is or how it's represented.
Bottom Line: though my frustrations resonate with these types of folks, it's people like them who think/behave this way make breaching the gap of making things more accessible significantly more difficult, and I wouldn't necessarily agree this is how the general blind person thinks/behaves.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

2019-07-12 00:47:45

a couple of ideas so we can at least show that we are a better site than all of the drama, especially the derailment attempt in post 8, nothing personal, its just that I am surprised these things cannot just be addressed privately, because I do tend to really agree with post 7, and there is nothing wrong with either one and this is why forums can be at times really useful resources for views and opinions and so on.

We could all:
1. Show this game to everyone we know plays games. Your brother, a friend, and ask them to leave better and smarter reviews than just if you don't implement accessibility I will not change my one star rating. Heck, most regular, sighted and even deaf people out there give a billion crabs about what accessibility is, whether you like it or not. The comment that went

i honestly do not play these games much, so i don't cair too much about what happeneds heare

not only has horrible spelling, it also has the worst attitude, but whatever.
2. If they don't want to leave reviews because the process is too complicated and so on, we could leave many of them ourselves, asking for their opinions and try to get this going. Nothing is more rewarding than encouragement for a developer or anyone who is really passionate about what they do.
3. Divulge that post everywhere, too. People need to know about this. Thanks a lot for sharing by the way.
This should also go into the general games discussion room as it really pertains to what this site is supposed to be about.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-07-12 00:49:00 (edited by daigonite 2019-07-12 00:49:44)

The solution to the problem is for some devs to provide a sort of accessibility framework to be easier for devs to produce. I don't think the right answer is to force devs to constantly remake the wheel, or nag at them to remember things that could easily be automated.

This hasn't been really done yet, but I'm attempting to do so with my maxseer project. It's obviously only in its early stages. I only am one guy though, and I have to do it for free or else the technology won't propagate, and the more people who contribute towards this the more that we can make accessibility much less of a pain for devs to develop for. Seriously. Please help.

Please, seriously, if you want accessibility to improve, look at the problem differently. Stop harassing devs and lets work together already. It hasn't worked in 20 years and it never will. Devs are already stressed enough and are under immense corporate pressure and this move towards accessibility is only making this worse. A lot of AAA devs are pushed near suicidal limits.

you like those kinds of gays because they're gays made for straights

2019-07-12 00:53:19

This sounds like some NFB bullshit, I fucking hate the NFB.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2019-07-12 00:54:40

@8, give me proof that no one on this forum will behave in the mannerism described in post 1. I am not stereotyping, I am describing how some blind people act. I am not saying that all blind people have an entitlement complex, nor am I saying that all blind people would act like post 1 indicates. Please read my posts more carefully and stop over-analyzing.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-12 01:03:22 (edited by daigonite 2019-07-12 01:03:55)

Listen, I know for a matter of fact some blind people can be abusive to developers. It may not even be anyone on this forum, but devs do not get paid enough to get treated like that (especially the ones who work for free like me)

Like I said, the only real solution is to create a software tool that automates these components because otherwise devs will not know what they're doing and accessibility will fail. Look at win32 apps. Why were they much more accessible than later apps? Because accessibility was mostly automated from the developer.

If you think the custom build solution is what we need, then be prepared to cut off accessibility from most sources. Most devs cannot afford that, nor do they have the technical knowledge necessary. It's our job to provide that for ourselves and for them, it gives them the tools they need to give you guys the technology you need to be able to play these games. That is exactly what I'm trying to push with maxseer.

And if that's some NFB bullshit then clearly you don't know me very well, haha

you like those kinds of gays because they're gays made for straights

2019-07-12 01:06:33

I'm confused though. How could we make a tool that does that? We could (possibly?) make a tool that checks that every field islabeled that needs it, and so on, but what about the more unusual aspects. An automaed framework can only go so far (as aptly demonstrated by various web accessibility checkers). Even with HTML you can't automate the entire accessibility pipeline. How, then, do you propose to automate such a pipeline with platforms like Steam, or video games? That, I think, is not something you can automate.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-12 01:11:56 (edited by daigonite 2019-07-12 01:15:46)

I think you're confused about the nature of automation. Nothing can be 100% automated, rather automation is a means to reduce work from the creator so they can focus on more important tasks.

By producing a standard for certain functions that are commonly used in gaming, such as pathfinding, proximity detection, footsteps, ect. these are all features that developers do not have to worry about when building out accessibility.

Then, you can provide a set of tools that, with a little bit of input from the developer, can flesh out the rest of the accessibility with a little guidance. By providing templates for developers to use, they can further expand based on the needs of the application.

This is similar to the development of frameworks for the web. Of course they don't do everything, but they do automate a huge chunk of the work so when a developer does have to do that 10% that isn't automated they can focus on that; and the automation also provides tools to make that 10% easier (such as providing a managed environment to work in).

Of course, this does not accommodate every situation and automating accessibility will always be a progressive. But saying that we should just not do anything because we can't possibly automate everything is a little ridiculous, dont' you agree? Imagine how many games would be much much more accessible if those features I just mentioned were implemented into them. Most top down games and basic first person shooters could probably use maxseer in its current state to give it a much higher level of playability than existed before.

And lets get real, most of the features that need to be added in regards to accessibility really can be automated. Like, is there any excuse for 95% of menus not being blind accessible in video games? Seriously?

Again, that's the idea behind maxseer. You're never going to reduce developer involvement to 0% because thats impossible in general.

Think about jquery for a second. Imagine building an entire website's javascript functionality through goddamn DOM tags. That's what you had to do before. Jquery doesn't automate everything and there are some things you still need to do by hand, but it reduces developer work so much that it's almost trivial.

you like those kinds of gays because they're gays made for straights

2019-07-12 01:27:53 (edited by Ethin 2019-07-12 01:32:07)

@19, I see your point. My major concern is this: you can develop the framework all you like, add as many features as you like, but:
* how will you handle other types of games, i.e.: side-scrollers, top-down shooters, etc? If this is to be a standard, then it'll need to cover as many of these as possible.
* how will you get video game development teams to use it? Who, or what, will govern what the framework does and doesn't do?
My above question isn't "how will you get all teams," but either a majority, or a minority, of teams. Getting all of them to use it is a pipe dream.
I think a different approach to doing this would be to:
1) write a specification that defines a fully playable game. Such a definition might be "a game that is playable by individuals with and without disabilities."
2) Ensure that the specification governs what any game must have to be complaint with the specification. Obviously leave it open so that studios can add extensions to it.
3) Write a framework that includes only the requirements the specification governs.
This approach seems like a much better idea; either studios can go with their own in-house implementation or can go with an already-developed framework that is spec-compliant. This is what some programming languages do (i.e. with international bodies like ISO and IEEE).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-12 01:51:41

Players abusing developers feels very NFB related, not the developers themselves. The NFB is a joke nowadays with their extreme liberal attitudes, and just the way in which they handle communications with companies, kicking and screaming like toddlers until they get their way. Their image is corrupted because of this.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2019-07-12 02:21:12

Why does everyone hate the NFB? What have they actually done?

2019-07-12 02:30:42 (edited by daigonite 2019-07-12 02:51:20)

* you deal with different types of games by providing toolkits that have components that can be used in different kinds of games. Some components won't really be necessary for sone games. Having a tool kit with tons of tools for a wide variety of situations allows for the devs to have a wider set of options, without having to build everything from scratch.

But when someone comes up with a great accessibility solution, we should be trying to make that an open source framework so that in most cases it can just be applied easily, and in others it can be adjusted for specific circumstances.

It's important to understand that this is a progressive, community development. But the alternative is losing accessibility solutions to time and developers leaving the community.

* You give devs the choice, but put pressure on them to comply through competition. Colors, the game I'm working on, intends to do this by having a highly accessible experience. By making an example out of ourselves, we cause the public to ask, why isn't AAA using this? We encourage adoption through simplicity and reducing work (automation). They don't have to use maxseer specifically, they can just make their own framework based on the specifications.

* regarding authority, I think that having a main branch of the maxseer project is acceptable, but I want to promote the development of forks for specific design cases. Development should be decentralized and open, and based through spreading information in interested communities. Perhaps a maxseer forum or something. This could also be the origin of the official specifications. How this would work in practice, I'm not sure. But there should be minimized authority imho.

Specifications could be a good idea in addition, maxseer is essentially a specification that has a framework built around it, but a problem with in house solutions is that they still require a large amount of development that is unlikely to be encouraged if the market shifts away from accessibility for some reason. So having an actual usable framework as well is vital. Also, it encourages indie implementation of accessibility.

Pardon me if I'm a bit rough around the edges but I think maxseer is essentially trying to be a specification, I just didn't think about it that way. I'm not really sure what's wrong with having the development of both because indies will at least always have a free to use option.

I knew what your NFB joke was. Lol

Listen, I'm willing to develop this technology, but I need help from both communities to actually make it successful. If anyone actually gives a shit about accessibility its worth a shot, right?

je97 wrote:

Why does everyone hate the NFB? What have they actually done?

lol nothing that's why everyone gets miffed. mostly loud barking noises. Although I think they have had a few accomplishments as an organization.

you like those kinds of gays because they're gays made for straights

2019-07-12 03:13:20

@23, yeah, I know that its a specification as a framework, and your post was quite informative. I suggested we write up a formal specification though, on -- say -- GitHub, so that the specification is open and sited and blind individuals can add to it with an agreed-upon approval process. So he spec would be a formal document describing what games must have a minimum, and the framework would be an implementation of that specification.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-07-12 03:21:34

That's a great idea, but where should we start forming the ideas on how to structure this process? Would this thread work fine?

I'm not familiar as much with the more bureaucratic side of things just being a developer myself, but I can explain the reasoning in maxseer, and also, if people have things to add, I can also add it there. Then we can merge maxseer into both a framework and a specification.

I like it.

you like those kinds of gays because they're gays made for straights