Everyone, I've gone through the U.S. Code material as published by congress, and it seems to me that most video game companies are well within their right to ask for a waiver. Here's a paste of the most relevant section:
‘‘(h) COMMISSION FLEXIBILITY.— ‘‘(1) WAIVER.—The Commission shall have the authority, on its own motion or in response to a petition by a manufacturer or provider of advanced communications services or any interested party, to waive the requirements of this section for any feature or function of equipment used to provide or access advanced communications services, or for any class of such equipment, for any provider of advanced communications services, or for any class of such services, that— ‘‘(A) is capable of accessing an advanced communica- tions service; and ‘‘(B) is designed for multiple purposes, but is designed primarily for purposes other than using advanced commu- nications services. ‘‘(2) SMALL ENTITY EXEMPTION.—The Commission may exempt small entities from the requirements of this section." Basically, the FCC is allowed to give waivers to when the "advanced communications services" are not the main product. Keep in mind that "advanced communications services" is pretty narrow, and basically boils down to real-time chat in various forms. Graphics and cool looking visual effects are what most modern games are about; the ones that do have chat, usually only have it as an incidental feature to the actual game play. In short, you can play the game without chat, but you can't really chat without playing the game. To give three quick examples: - Facebook has games and advanced communications services. However, the main point of Facebook is the communications services, not the games. Facebook should not get a waiver. - World of warcraft is a game and has built in advanced communications services. However, the main point of WoW is the real time graphical aspect of the game, not the chat service. The WoW publisher and server maintainers should probably get waivers. - Skyrim is a graphical game with a lot of quests and quest text. It is single player and has no advanced communications services even though it does make heavy use of text. Because of this, the game isn't covered by the law, and doesn't need to request a waiver or add accessibility features (rather, it doesn't have to add accessibility features as a result of this set of laws.) In addition, congress added a guideline that makes a lot of sense: ‘‘(j) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—This section shall not be con- strued to require a manufacturer of equipment used for advanced communications or a provider of advanced communications services to make every feature and function of every device or service acces- sible for every disability." This basically says that not every feature must be accessible, which is particularly relevant to games like Alter Aeon, which have both a graphical interface and pure text-based interfaces for the visually impaired. I definitely agree with the AFB that the FCC should take a very close look at this; but it's pretty obvious to me that it makes sense for a lot of game companies to get waivers for their products. Keep in mind that congress simply provides guidance for the FCC; the FCC makes its own rules, as long as it doesn't conflict with what congress mandates. The proper place to make your voice heard would be to send your concerns to the FCC when the FCC is requesting public comment on its proposed rules. Dennis Towne Alter Aeon MUD http://www.alteraeon.com On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Dean Masters <dwmaster...@gmail.com> wrote: > ALERT!--1 Email from You Can Keep the FCC from Throwing Accessible Gaming > Tech Under the Bus!Subject: ALERT!--1 Email from You Can Keep the FCC from > Throwing Accessible Gaming Tech Under the Bus! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.