Re: CVAA Accessibility Rules Now In Effect
It was extremly strict about what I could say. I couldn't even say yes, I'm involved with game X for company Y or Z, or even confirm or deny the company was working on a game.
Precisely. Thank you.
I doubt it'll be as wonderful as everybody thinks
To be fair I don't think anyone has used the word "wonderful". Although it has had a huge impact on the industry it doesn't require gameplay to be accessible, it is not a silver bullet that is going to instantly make all games accessible to all people with disabilities.
Once lawyers and big companies with a sole interest in shareholders get through it and the FCC finishes 'adjusting' the CVAA ... lawyers, big business and lobying power to 'change' the CVAA to better suit what big interests want ... they'll spend cash lobbying to have the bits they don't like changed to their liking ... And how they ignore a complete other side
CVAA is not new legislation. FCC finished adjusting it in 2011 (the text was signed off by congress in 2010, more detail on technical standards came in 2011)
The process of lawyers / lobbyists / big companies trying to get it changed has already happened. They initially pushed for the games industry to be exempt from CVAA. The FCC then put it out to public consultation. There were many replies from both individuals and disability advocacy organisations (like the AFB). The FCC listened to the disability groups and the individuals, decided their arguments outweighed those of the industry, and denied the exemption.
Next the lobbyists and lawyers asked for a temporary exemptions, to allow some time for investigation and R&D on the basis that the challenges involved were quite different to other industries.
The FCC again went back to the disability groups. To cut a long story short a series of temporary waivers was granted, conditional to the industry being able to demonstrate that progress was being made and worked to built relationships with the disability groups. And that's precisely what happened. This is all on record, including progress reports detailing the ways in which the industry was working together with the disability groups.
in 2015 the industry said they were no longer going to ask for waivers for consoles and networks, that they were able to meet CVAA's requirements for them. I'm sure you'll remember that was the year that accessibility functionality first appeared on both XB and PS.
In 2017 (the year that the Xbox text <-> speech API was released) the lobbyists and lawyers asked for one final extension, saying that if they were granted the extension they would ask for no more extensions and from then on in would comply with the requirements. Again in discussion with the disability groups, the FCC agreed. And that extension ended on Dec 31st 2018.
I've just been using the term "lobbyists and lawyers" to be in line with your own language. The people actually carrying out the negotiations throughout all of this are an industry body called the ESA, who have an explicit mandate for handling issues between the games industry and the government. Again this is all on public record, easily viewable on the FCC website.
The ESA membership consists of the following companies:
- 505 games
- Activision Blizzard
- Bandai Namco
- Bethesda
- Capcom
- Deep Silver
- Disney interactive
- EA
- Epic Games
- Focus Home Interactive
- Gearbox Publishing
- GungHo
- Intellivision Entertainment
- Kalypso
- Konami
- Legends of Learning
- Magic Leap
- Microsoft
- Natsume
- NCsoft
- Nexon
- Nintendo
- Nvidia
- Outright Games
- Phosphor
- Rebellion
- Riot Games
- Sega Atlus
- Sixfoot
- Sony
- Square Enix
- Take Two Interactive
- Tencent
- THQ Nordic
- Triseum
- Ubisoft
- Warner Brothers
- Xseed Games
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