Re: I'm kind of concerned about the culture surrounding usability
I do enjoy the discourse going on in this topic, much more than I would ever get with those pretentious twitter feeds. holy goddamn
[ a-t ] 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is to focus on software solutions t hat are compatible with mainstream stuff - aka the screenreader solution, but less outdated.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 rea lly 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 ma ny 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.
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 eventu ally 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 p eople 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.
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