Hi thom interesting stuff. I have similar troubles with the numbers of young blind people when trying to promote the cause of recording more Sf or Fantasy books, sinse here in the Uk, there is no government funding to make books accessible and it's left up to charities, who have limited resources and tend to cater to the majority, ie, the eldily.
It's hard enough to try and persuade some of them, and they are charitable organizations set up specifically to help blind people and not (in theory anyway), make a prophit. So, while I totally support and would be glad to help with any efforts to make main stream companies more aware of accessible gaming issues, I'm not holding my breath for anything more than a few more titles like Sound voyager being released. Beware the Grue! Dark. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 7:15 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Forcing accessibility > > Hi all, > Sorry, I am very late to this party, but you really must understand > there is no way we can force developers much less game companies like > activision, Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft Game Studios, to do anything. > Especially, since we are a minority group with very little cash > potential. In fact encouraging them with a good persuasively drafted > position is the only way to even get started. > You can get started by becoming part of and supporting groups like IGDA > which is already attempting to do just that. Put together articles, code > examples, etc to bring to the big name developers and their companies to > promote more accessible game design implementations. > Unfortunately, we also have to increase our ranks and have a higher > number of statistics to show these companies. While Audyssey is a very > active community we have on this list at most 200 to 300 members at a > time. Now, assuming every single one of us bought a mainstream game made > accessible for $45.00 that only comes to $13500 total for 300 units > sold. That little amount of cash won't interest a company. The average > dev for those companies triples that amount in his or her salary. > Ok, from speaking to my fellow ag developers we estimate the total > market strength right now at 2000 products sold by any one accessible > company. Using our example of $45 times 2000 units sold $comes to > $90000. Looking better, but certainly not enough to interest a > mainstream company which is grossing millions on Doom III, Jedi Knight > X, Castlevania X, etc... > I grant you if Activision or another big company like Microsoft put out > an accessible game they could probably Brose more than $90000 since they > have channels to market to a wider audience. However, once you start > ticking off the numbers like who does not have computers, who is old and > elderly who is likely to be disinterested, and so on the numbers of > potential customers shrinks rather rapidly. > A statistical fact here is the majority of those blind in the US is > those who have lost their sight later in life do to many common issues > involved with old age. Having younger people with vision impairments is > a significantly smaller group than the elderly with vision impairments. > > > _______________________________________________ > Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] > To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can > visit > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make > any subscription changes via the web. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
