Disability Linkspam: UK PhD Accessibility etc

[davidgillon]

Professor Farah Mendelsohn (the author) mentioned this paper in the Fans for Accessible Conventions FB group (she's a well known UK fan as well as being a disabled academic) and it should potentially interest a few people: UK PhD Accessibility, A Pilot Study I don't think there are any astounding revelations, but it does collect a bunch of stats in one place and confirm there are issues.

I've been shooting off my mouth to journalists again, and seem to be responsible for the title of :

Drop in Access to Work numbers shows DWP ‘is strangling the scheme’

TLDR: Disability employment figures supposedly rising, yet the number of disabled people accessing government support to work is actually down slightly - either employers are cherrypicking people with minor disabilities, or the scheme is increasingly difficult to access. (What makes this all utterly ridiculous, government was making £1.40 in tax revenue for every pound spent on AtW, so the Tories cut the scheme).

I won't link to anything as it's more a cumulative effect thing, but there seem to be quite a few people raising questions about how accessible Pokemon Go is. I'm not really a mobile game person, but I'm not remotely attracted by a game that requires you to walk around.

Comments

[slashmarks]

The impression I and some of my friends have is that a lot of the people writing about accessibility and Pokemon Go may not actually be playing the game; for instance, there's a persistent rumor that the distance measurements are based off of pedometers and won't work in a wheelchair that's completely untrue. (It's based off of a speed limit and GPS, so you can use it in a wheelchair, on a bike, or in a car if you drive slowly.)

There are obviously some amount of issues in the sense that the base concept of the game requires you to leave your house and some people can't, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to frame something like that as an access issue that was overlooked; compare to, say, all of the games that are made to use only the mouse or only the keyboard and are therefore inaccessible to people with various hand and wrist problems, which does not lead to anywhere near the amount of news articles.

I HAVE heard that it's totally inaccessible for blind players because there's no support for screen reading/etc, which sounds a lot more like a reasonable objection, but I can't personally confirm.

[davidgillon]

Most of the reports I've seen have assumed it's possible from a chair, but that you then run into access and energy issues. I actually hadn't seen the pedometer thing.

compare to, say, all of the games that are made to use only the mouse or only the keyboard and are therefore inaccessible to people with various hand and wrist problems

Keyboard and mouse are actually fairly easy to replace, there's even a configurable sip-and-puff gaming rig. Pokemon Go may rely on going outside, but how far you go is something that could easily be made scalable.

WRT VI accessibility, the BBC Ouch article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20160715_pokemon.pdf says it's a pretty comprehensive fail "The font is really, really tiny and also in poor contrast. So, a lot of it is kind of like a pale blue and white, and a lot of the bits are like pink and white text, and it’s very, very difficult to read any of that."

[the_rck]

I suspect that Pokemon Go and Ingress are pretty impossible for people with any sort of mobility issues, and I would be surprised if Niantic has thought about, say, voice access as opposed to button pressing.

Both games are useful, though, for some people of my acquaintance (including me) with disabling agoraphobia or other types of anxiety. I had to take an Ativan in order to go out the door for an appointment today, but I've been taking ten minute walks every day, mostly unaccompanied, just down to the bottom of the hill where there's an Ingress portal and back up. That's really huge for me. My preference is to stay inside with the curtains drawn as much as I can get away with. I don't feel safe that way, but doing that lets me pretend that the things I'm afraid of aren't still out there.

[davidgillon]

Yeah, it clearly has pluses as well as minuses, and which is which depends on your specific disability.

[lilysea]

A friend of mine has had success with playing Pokemon Go

a) from a slow-moving car

b) from her power wheelchair.