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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2017 - 03 - 24 - ID#61axwv
5
How a blind man plays mainstream video games and the future of accessibility in games (cbc.ca)
submitted by fastfinge
Nighthawk321 8 points 6y ago
Is it weird that I get salty when I read articles like this? I always think to myself, "Oh cool, another blind gamer!", only to learn they're visually impaired.

And is it even weirder that I'm even saltier that Nintendo is recently getting so much attention for making accessible games, when they literally don't do anything for blind gamers? Meanwhile, Microsoft recently developed an API to allow developers to add TTS into their games.
fastfinge [OP] 3 points 6y ago
I have the same feelings, but in my case with employment. You always see articles about a "blind man" who works doing some impressive job, and he always turns out to be low vision. This drives me nuts, because unemployment of the totally blind is way over 90 percent in a lot of places. But when you include low vision and legally blind, you can pretend that it's only 40 or 50 percent unemployment, so everything's fine! No, it isn't. I mean, it isn't fine either way, really. But I think we need to start insisting that people separate "blind" and "low vision" in things like employment stats. Otherwise, those of us who are blind are not going to get the help we need.
Nighthawk321 5 points 6y ago
I agree. I sound like a blind advocate extremist, but there really is a difference between visual impaired and blind in regards to achievements.
fastfinge [OP] 3 points 6y ago
Agreed. Though I want to make the point that there is no difference in possibilities. A fully blind person, with the right supports and some hard work, can achieve just as much as a low vision person, or a sighted person. The problem right now is that the supports aren't there. Blind people are less likely to have a university education than low vision people. Most software that is accessible with magnification to those with low vision does not work with screen readers. Many jobs that require reading some print can be held by low vision folks, but not blind folks. Etc, etc, etc. These are the things that need changing. And I think they can only be changed by embracing the word "blind" as a label that we can use to get the supports we need. And, perhaps, encouraging low vision folks to identify themselves as low vision or legally blind. The tricky thing is, how do we do that without making low vision folks feel unwelcome? They have a lot of challenges we do not, and I think it's important that they remain part of our community. I'd hate, for example, for this sub to split into /r/blind and /r/lowvision. We gain a lot of value from having one community that works together.
Nighthawk321 3 points 6y ago
Oh yeah I totally agree, but I was thinking more along the line of video gaming. Playing a video game totally blind is much different than being visually impaired and playing it. I'm glad we're sticking to one sub as well.
Vaelian 2 points 6y ago
I've been at the top end of the legally blind spectrum my entire life until I went fully blind 3 years ago and don't recall having any challenges that I don't have now. I do, however, recall that my life was much easier because the only thing that I couldn't do was drive.
spider_lord 1 points 6y ago
Yeah, it pisses me off a bit too. Like making things bigger works for some people, but not for most of us. We need audio queues and TTS to play any of these games.
Vaelian 1 points 6y ago
Agree, as I know from personal experience that being at the top-end of the legally blind spectrum is no impediment to playing any mainstream video-game. I was still playing mainstream video-games when my vision was as low as 5% or 20/400, and the only reason why I stopped was because I started to lose contrast perception at that point.
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