CVAA Regulations Affecting Multiplayer Chat Just Went Into Effect

Things like adjustable UI, input, or color I can agree with, although the are minor caveats. Something like speech to text, or text to speech is too much to ask for in my opinion. That's getting into territory of media conversion which isn't some trivial addition.

I'm unfamiliar with APIs relating to text to speech, much less of it's cross platform. Will developers have to license some technology to be able to legally sell their product. If you rely on Steam for that technology but GOG doesn't offer it, will you be unable to offer that game on GOG? Will you get punished if your Linux build doesn't have the support for the feature? Will updates to games like Minecraft require that new cost of business? How will an MMO be required to handle the copious text spam rendering TTS useless? Is the existence of Discord for an alternative good enough?

In all this law seems like applying what used to be obvious regulations to old media, and forcing it into new media with a lot of vague or non trivial standards. If the was a standard api for external STT or TTS, you could argue for that inclusion then it puts the responsibility on 3rd parties to provide implementations.

Caveats above being that:
1) I shouldn't have to deal with people complaining their 640x480, 3840x768, or 8k resolution is difficult to see. I can barely read text on the Oculus Rift as it is.
2) input issues are more hardware than software if you're missing a hand or similar.

Lastly, if I had any interest in Anthem, the loss of text chat would have been a big issue for me due to my poor hearing. And the lack of speech to text doesn't appear to be touched on despite the likelyhood of hard of hearing people like me playing games rather than blind people.
 
So if I'm mute and can't speak, or just have difficulty speaking... I have to go get a Stephen Hawking sqawk box or Speak'N'Say because typing in a game is now illegal?
 
Armenius said:
Yes, because blind people are playing video games, a visual medium.
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I mean, games are largely an audiovisual medium. If you lack the ability to hear or see I have to wonder how enjoyable the games could ever be.
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SomeoneElse said:
I'm pretty sure those who are blind aren't playing video games.
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Yes because clearly a blind or visually impaired person can't or doesn't have the desire to play video games. /S (and yes that is sarcasm in case you didn't get it)

https://compete.kotaku.com/blind-player-racks-up-a-win-at-his-first-street-fighter-1793936241

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ed-video-game-world-relying-solely-sound.html

https://www.ksl.com/article/4640819...l-followers-advocating-for-more-accessibility


You should all try to educate yourself about what blind or visually impaired individuals are capable of, especially when given tools to assist them.


Armenius said:
The only sticking point is why does text chat require text-to-speech.
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Because people who are blind very often utilize text to speech applications like JAWS https://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS or NVDA https://www.nvaccess.org/ or any number of other available options to read things on the screen for them due to their level of visual impairment. Unfortunately these programs only work when things are designed for accessibility.

Bioware recently implied that the CVAA may be behind their decision to cut text chat out of Anthem. If EA can't afford to fully deal with the regulations in a high budget title, one has to wonder how smaller multiplayer developers will fare.
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If this is true then shame on Bioware, and it shows how much of a crap developer they really are. It's not like the ability for software to read a screen to do text to speech hasn't existed for 20 years or longer for them to be able to integrate that kind of functionality to read text chat in a game and UI menu elements.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm all for greater inclusion for the disabled, but isn't this a little bit like a blind man complaining he can't get a job as a bus driver?

I mean, games are largely an audiovisual medium. If you lack the ability to hear or see I have to wonder how enjoyable the games could ever be.
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I think your analogy is not good.

Those with visual impairments or blindness, or deafness, aren't asking for media to be what it can't be. They are asking for augmentation, or slight alteration to make it work for them.
To your point, they're not asking for games to work completely differently for blind people. They'd like things that let them partake and there have been a number of games that have done that for color blind folks for instance, without any kind of impact to the rest.

It's not quite black and white. It's that a lot of times, small changes in color schemes and font sizes make a very large difference.
 
darckhart said:
I haven't read the exact verbiage, but I'm confused. how does cutting out the whole text chat function mean they are in compliance with this? it would seem like no text chat is even more violation..

And without knowing anything about cost, I'm not convinced it will add all this "enormous" cost. That's always the convenient excuse for laziness and people that just don't want to do it....
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Simple, if the feature doesn't exist it doesn't have to be accessible to hearing or vision impaired users. Just like the wheelchair ramp analogy, if the entrance is removed it doesn't need to be wheelchair accessible.
 
I can see the desire to get the gov't involved in this in regards to general telecommunications. I don't agree with it as it was written since it's far too broad and all-encompassing, but I can understand the intent.

What I cannot see a need for is the gov't getting involved in this regarding any entertainment medium/platform.
 
I apologize for my juvenile post earlier, I had a knee jerk reaction to someone talking about 1984 and sawing off limbs. That type of namecalling should not be a part of these forums, IMO.

Now, as can be seen by the article, this is not new regulation targeting games or gamers. This is regulation that the entire media industry has complied with and the triple a gaming companies have been, apparently, blowing off. It is quite apparent in the article that they have been given a waver for many years and have not paid attention to the warnings and have not given themselves time to adjust gradually to a very reasonable set of standards. Now it may not be the fault of individuals working on games, Im sure they had no Idea. But doesn't it make sense that they would come out and say that "we are scrapping in game chat because of this bullshit" when in fact the powers that be had a chance to stay on pace but wanted to save a short run buck.
 
lollerwaffle said:
Those with visual impairments or blindness, or deafness, aren't asking for media to be what it can't be. They are asking for augmentation, or slight alteration to make it work for them.
To your point, they're not asking for games to work completely differently for blind people. They'd like things that let them partake and there have been a number of games that have done that for color blind folks for instance, without any kind of impact to the rest.

It's not quite black and white. It's that a lot of times, small changes in color schemes and font sizes make a very large difference.
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Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the 'them' in your post anymore. It's regulation now. The 'them' is not disabled or impaired people, it's the government....and they aren't asking.

Who knows how the law will be interpreted by the gov't and/or if/how it will be enforced evenly. We're talking about entertainment here. We're not talking about a situation where a disabled or impaired person could be prevented from communicating in an emergency situation or anything vital. We're talking about games.

I'm all for developers making slight alterations or additional options available if they so choose. I'm all for encouraging them to do so in a positive manner. I am not at all for this kind of legislation though.
If the gov't wants businesses to act in a certain way, they should incentivize it, not punish transgression.
It seems gov't all too frequently only knows how to force behavior through threats and punishment.

Building a better world through threats of punishment and violence.
The Land of the Free!
 
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Laowai said:
I can see the desire to get the gov't involved in this in regards to general telecommunications. I don't agree with it as it was written since it's far too broad and all-encompassing, but I can understand the intent.

What I cannot see a need for is the gov't getting involved in this regarding any entertainment medium/platform.
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I agree with you that I do not want government involved in entertainment. This is not what we are talking about. It IS governments job to ensure that everyone has access, at a reasonable level, to the entertainment that they should not interfere with.
 
[/QUOTE]I'm all for developers making slight alterations or additional options available if they so choose. I'm all for encouraging them to do so in a positive manner. I am not at all for this kind of legislation though.
If the gov't wants businesses to act in a certain way, they should incentivize it, not punish transgression.
It seems gov't all too frequently only knows how to force behavior through threats and punishment.[/QUOTE]

I have to respectfully disagree when your talking about government incentivizing inclusion. History has shown that capitalism will take the easy way out and exclude when it is the easier route to profit. Sometimes it must be forced, and it may be painful at first, but it is always beneficial in the long run. Someone made a Stephen Hawking crack earlier, but there would be no Hawking cracks without government interference and enforcement. And if you want to imagine a world without Hawking imagine a world without the plow.
 
maxius said:
This is just a way for devs to have a common base of options to include in games and its a good thing no experience should be off limits to anyone within reason games arent just for chest pounding wanna be Alphas
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Game design shouldn't be forced to adopt to the needs of a few individuals.

Has anyone stopped to even ask said individuals to see how interested are they in videogames in general?

I'd wager they're mandating something that costs millions to implement in all games, restricts creative freedom and will eventually be left unused for the most part.

It's like mandating that all cars must be driveable by people with no legs.
 
Smoked Brisket said:
I have to respectfully disagree when your talking about government incentivizing inclusion. History has shown that capitalism will take the easy way out and exclude when it is the easier route to profit. Sometimes it must be forced, and it may be painful at first, but it is always beneficial in the long run. Someone made a Stephen Hawking crack earlier, but there would be no Hawking cracks without government interference and enforcement. And if you want to imagine a world without Hawking imagine a world without the plow.
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Helping individuals needs is very different than mandating across the board changes that are not beneficial in fact detrimental to most. Games aren't a public service. They're not a life necessity. So providing access to games is not something the government should involve itself in.
If someone wants to make videogames for blind or deaf people give them all the help, grant them some subsidy for it. But mandating that every game should cater to special needs is d detrimental in the long run. It is a social justice policy.

Social justice aims for equality of outcome, the only way to get equality of outcome is if you lessen everyone's experience to that of the lowest common denominator. Basically meaning ruin it for everyone for the sake of a few. I'll not stand for that. It's not the lifting up of the challenged, it's the lowering of everyone else to their level.
 
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M76 said:
Helping individuals needs is very different than mandating across the board changes that are not beneficial in fact detrimental to most. Games aren't a public service. They're not a life necessity. So providing access to games is not something the government should involve itself in.
If someone wants to make videogames for blind or deaf people give them all the help, grant them some subsidy for it. But mandating that every game should cater to special needs is d detrimental in the long run. It is a social justice policy.

Social justice aims for equality of outcome, the only way to get equality of outcome is if you lessen everyone's experience to that of the lowest common denominator. Basically meaning ruin it for everyone for the sake of a few. I'll not stand for that. It's not the lifting up of the challenged, it's the lowering of everyone else to their level.
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Social justice is not an appropriate term here. Social justice refers to redistribution of money according to who works to earn that money in society. If this was a topic about unions or the shrinking middle class we would use the term "social justice." When we are talking about giving handicapped people as much access as possible we are talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is not "social justice" or a nice thing to do, it is the law and includes individuals who may have gotten disabled by serving their country.
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Smoked Brisket said:
Social justice is not an appropriate term here. Social justice refers to redistribution of money according to who works to earn that money in society. If this was a topic about unions or the shrinking middle class we would use the term "social justice." When we are talking about giving handicapped people as much access as possible we are talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is not "social justice" or a nice thing to do, it is the law and includes individuals who may have gotten disabled by serving their country.
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Social justice is not just about money, it's about making every group have the same level of everything. Same success rate, same wages, same political representation, same representation in leadership, etc.

I'm not saying don't help disabled people, I thought that was clear. I said don't help them by mandating standards that are not necessary for 99.99% of the population.
 
Most things in modern society are not a public service. Movies are not, restaurants are not, resorts are not, casinos are not, churches are not, and we can go on and on. All these places, if they serve the public, must have wheelchair access for accessibility and for safety but mainly to deter discrimination. The desire to try our best as a society to offer accessibility to people with disabilities does not make us weaker, quite the opposite, it allows us to value intellect and push for solutions that put humanity on equal terms by virtue of their minds.
 
M76 said:
Social justice is not just about money, it's about making every group have the same level of everything. Same success rate, same wages, same political representation, same representation in leadership, etc..
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That is communism. If that is what you have been taught social justice is then you have been misinformed. I respectfully say to you that social justice is a really good thing. It is what happened when we abolished Jim Crowe laws and segregation. It is what happened when women got the right to vote. It should not be distorted.
 
Smoked Brisket said:
That is communism. If that is what you have been taught social justice is then you have been misinformed. I respectfully say to you that social justice is a really good thing. It is what happened when we abolished Jim Crowe laws and segregation. It is what happened when women got the right to vote. It should not be distorted.
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Of course it is, it's basically marxism. that's what all self proclaimed social justice activists seemingly strive for. Some even go as far as publicly admitting that they are marxists. Of course there are grades of social justice but make no mistake this policy is on that scale, and it's too much in my opinion.

What is acceptable social justice is making a ramp for the movie theater for the disabled as it doesn't bother anyone.. But mandating that every movie shown must be subtitled for deaf people? That's too much as it is detrimental to everyone else's experience. Instead have one showing of a movie every week when it is subtitled, where deaf people get priority tickets.
 
Smoked Brisket said:
I agree with you that I do not want government involved in entertainment. This is not what we are talking about. It IS governments job to ensure that everyone has access, at a reasonable level, to the entertainment that they should not interfere with.
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That's your opinion. It is NOT a self evident truth. Congress has passed laws requiring that concessions be made to allow equal access for the disabled. The very fact that this is required via legislation is all the proof you need to know that it is NOT the "governments job" to provide this. The people's representatives in government have CHOSEN to do this.

Furthermore, laws requiring access for the disabled typically involve public access. In my opinion, we've gone around the bend in considering video games that are not public access to provide concessions for the disabled as remotely necessary.

At this point the government is shopping around to find problems to solve that aren't necessary to be solved.

I also take exception to the idea that "capitalism" takes the easy way out, let alone that there is some other economic system that is remotely better. "Socialism", or more specifically the various forms of Marxism, being the only real alternative to capitalism, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, not only can they not do better than capitalism, such as providing better access for the disabled, that they cannot even provide the basic necessities of life (see, also, Venezuela) or even protect the sanctity of their own citizens' lives (see also, 100 million dead at the hands of Stalin, Mao, etc.). The idea that capitalism is somehow inferior in this way is laughable in the extreme.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of this issue. Needles to say, the HardOCP commenters are proving themselves idiots on both extremes. I love the people who think this regulation is either "easy" or "cheap" to implement. Suffice to say, you don't know jack. But then, you'd make perfect congress critters since none of them seem to know jack, either.

The notion that this regulation is what the founders had in mind for the very limited scope of the federal government is hysterical.
 
deadrody said:
That's your opinion. It is NOT a self evident truth. Congress has passed laws requiring that concessions be made to allow equal access for the disabled. The very fact that this is required via legislation is all the proof you need to know that it is NOT the "governments job" to provide this. The people's representatives in government have CHOSEN to do this.

Furthermore, laws requiring access for the disabled typically involve public access. In my opinion, we've gone around the bend in considering video games that are not public access to provide concessions for the disabled as remotely necessary.

At this point the government is shopping around to find problems to solve that aren't necessary to be solved.

I also take exception to the idea that "capitalism" takes the easy way out, let alone that there is some other economic system that is remotely better. "Socialism", or more specifically the various forms of Marxism, being the only real alternative to capitalism, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, not only can they not do better than capitalism, such as providing better access for the disabled, that they cannot even provide the basic necessities of life (see, also, Venezuela) or even protect the sanctity of their own citizens' lives (see also, 100 million dead at the hands of Stalin, Mao, etc.). The idea that capitalism is somehow inferior in this way is laughable in the extreme.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of this issue. Needles to say, the HardOCP commenters are proving themselves idiots on both extremes. I love the people who think this regulation is either "easy" or "cheap" to implement. Suffice to say, you don't know jack. But then, you'd make perfect congress critters since none of them seem to know jack, either.

The notion that this regulation is what the founders had in mind for the very limited scope of the federal government is hysterical.
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We went around the bend about 25 years ago. Longer than that actually.
For some reason I am simply unable to fathom, it seems that many businesses are beholden to the "public". As such, they have to comply with ADA regulations among other potentially problematic laws and regulations that should not apply to business IMO.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's not a gov't office or a utility or anything funded by taxpayers, there should not be any gov't mandated concern about the "public" enforced by threats of violence and/or financial penalties. Businesses should be free to serve whomever they choose and deny service to whomever they choose for any reason.
That's about as basic as basic gets. As a business owner, nobody should have a right to my services and/or goods.
Nobody should have a right to visit a certain restaurant and force them to spend money to cater to their specific needs. Nobody should have a right to force a movie theater to accommodate their abilities or preferences. Nobody should have a right to force somebody else to bake a cake they don't want to fucking bake.
Not one person in America should have those rights or that kind of power over another and the government sure as hell should not have the power to dictate who offers what services to who.

We forgot what it means to be an American a long time ago and we'll pay a dear price for that.
 
mkk said:
All it takes in most games is a few options in line with the color blindness already available in many products with reasonable UX design.
Cry about that in any multi million dollar production and we know what to expect of the user interface in general
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How do you fix "no sight". A braile extention to a VIDEO game, FFS? It sound ridiculous. These days its not surprising this has some ulterior motive. Like pushing chat away from small competitors to the big corps who can better afford it. or making chat standardized to record and to police wrong think. Or, God knows what.

I like when a game helps me out with my colorblindness, but you know what it should be Gaming sites & mags helping the customer know if it has that feature so we can apply market pressure. Not some legislated burden that kills new competition. This is the problem with a corrupt press.
 
meme said:
Forcing game makers to make their controls configurable is a good idea, as it's very easy for anyone to do and everyone should always do it anyway.
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Generally the market should drive that and would if we had a critical press.
 
Dregoth said:
Yes because clearly a blind or visually impaired person can't or doesn't have the desire to play video games. /S (and yes that is sarcasm in case you didn't get it)

https://compete.kotaku.com/blind-player-racks-up-a-win-at-his-first-street-fighter-1793936241

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ed-video-game-world-relying-solely-sound.html

https://www.ksl.com/article/4640819...l-followers-advocating-for-more-accessibility


You should all try to educate yourself about what blind or visually impaired individuals are capable of, especially when given tools to assist them.




Because people who are blind very often utilize text to speech applications like JAWS https://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS or NVDA https://www.nvaccess.org/ or any number of other available options to read things on the screen for them due to their level of visual impairment. Unfortunately these programs only work when things are designed for accessibility.



If this is true then shame on Bioware, and it shows how much of a crap developer they really are. It's not like the ability for software to read a screen to do text to speech hasn't existed for 20 years or longer for them to be able to integrate that kind of functionality to read text chat in a game and UI menu elements.
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Yes because if it was anything close to common, there wouldn't be articles about it. You want to drive burden at a minimum financial to others (likely excluding yourself) and kill new companies to virtual signal for a few.
 
SomeoneElse said:
I would totally agree, I would also use this to create limited terms because they are trying to make laws over things that have passed by their understanding. Fresh views from smarter people would probably be better for the population. Career politicians don't care about anything that deal with tech they don't even use or understand.
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We need to apply this to judges too!
 
Jagger100 said:
Yes because if it was anything close to common, there wouldn't be articles about it. You want to drive burden at a minimum financial to others (likely excluding yourself) and kill new companies to virtual signal for a few.
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My point wasn't to illustrate that it was common, it was to illustrate that there are individuals who are blind or with visual impairments that do play games despite the lack of accessibility options, and likely many more that have the desire to should the tools exist within the games to allow them to do so.

As to the financial burden, I seriously doubt it is going to put a huge financial strain on larger development studios / publishers and I doubt it would kill new companies. You certainly don't see new companies that fold because accessibility regulations require them to include things like wheelchair ramp access for individuals do you? Besides by game developers including these options and allowing for the possibility for blind or visually impaired individuals to play their games that means that those who desire to would possibly buy said games which would mean money from said sales and offsetting at the very least some of the cost.

Just because someone is blind doesn't mean they cease to want to do things sighted individuals can, and provided they have tools available to them they are capable of many things that sighted people are capable of doing.

Like I said it's not like software to read text and convert it to speech hasn't existed for 20+ years and shouldn't be that difficult to include along with options for larger fonts or UI elements and color blindness. Some games already include color blindness options and UI scaling for larger elements, and sound in games and positional audio has generally improved in games too over the years which also benefits sighted individuals, so I don't think it's asking much to include the ability to convert text to speech. In fact the one I linked NVDA is free and open source meaning these companies could likely make use of code or API's that have already been written to do just that.
 
Waiting for the equality of KDR regulation that is next. EQUAL OUTCOMES FOR EVERYONE!
 
capt_cope said:
Simple, if the feature doesn't exist it doesn't have to be accessible to hearing or vision impaired users. Just like the wheelchair ramp analogy, if the entrance is removed it doesn't need to be wheelchair accessible.
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hm IDK if that's a good analogy because wouldn't that mean they'd have to cut out the entire p2p communication function?
 
My concern with this isn't remotely related to a blind or deaf man wanting to play a video game. If a developer can spend pennies to provide access then frankly pony up sunshine. If the cost becomes prohibitive then I'd have an issue with it though.

My main concern is what jackasses are going to do with this law... and how people are going to rabidly support those actions regardless of their situational validity.
I grew up in a town where we had a major issue with an ADA lawyer coming around and brutalizing businesses. The towns only disabled persons were vets(and one absolutely amazing blind weaver) who had never once made a complaint to the ADA about access because for their community it wasn't needed. This didn't stop a jackass from shutting down over 10% of the town's businesses due to lawsuits no one asked for by a man whos only disability was a lack of soul.

So say meeting this regulation costs 25% more budget to an indy game or tech startup. Do those companies decide to make effectively zero profit at all and run at a loss? They can't really charge more if even successful indy companies barely make any cash NOW even on good sales. Is it acceptable to cripple innovation and smaller groups with regulation for the minority? I'm honestly curious to people opinions on this. It's one of those topics that needs a dozen viewpoints before you can even start a debate. I just see this law, as written, existing more to allow punitive lawsuits rather than actually protecting disabled person rights.
 
Nafensoriel said:
My concern with this isn't remotely related to a blind or deaf man wanting to play a video game. If a developer can spend pennies to provide access then frankly pony up sunshine. If the cost becomes prohibitive then I'd have an issue with it though.

My main concern is what jackasses are going to do with this law... and how people are going to rabidly support those actions regardless of their situational validity.
I grew up in a town where we had a major issue with an ADA lawyer coming around and brutalizing businesses. The towns only disabled persons were vets(and one absolutely amazing blind weaver) who had never once made a complaint to the ADA about access because for their community it wasn't needed. This didn't stop a jackass from shutting down over 10% of the town's businesses due to lawsuits no one asked for by a man whos only disability was a lack of soul.

So say meeting this regulation costs 25% more budget to an indy game or tech startup. Do those companies decide to make effectively zero profit at all and run at a loss? They can't really charge more if even successful indy companies barely make any cash NOW even on good sales. Is it acceptable to cripple innovation and smaller groups with regulation for the minority? I'm honestly curious to people opinions on this. It's one of those topics that needs a dozen viewpoints before you can even start a debate. I just see this law, as written, existing more to allow punitive lawsuits rather than actually protecting disabled person rights.
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Even good ideas will be exploited by the shiftiest and greedy, but that doesn't mean those good ideas should be thrown out. Instead, we need to adjust to deal with some of those who are exploitative and accept that a few jerks will always be present. As to what you described regarding games, there can be a number of things done to ensure that it doesn't cost 25% budget to be in compliance. This is one of those things that needs a regulation as part of this entire law that says "First of all, we are going to set aside so much money for the creation of an open source licensed middleware component that does everything we're asking to make games accessible, plus a certain amount for future development/upkeep. It will be free to include in every game or open project, which will remove the necessity to write a custom interpretation every time. Furthermore, for those who want to write another implementation or build an engine/some other software with these features, they must be compatible with the standards included in the open source middleware component. Thus, we have one single standard and a free and open implementation of that standard. Every X years the standard will be iterated and open to concerns/updates , where the money for the future development/upkeep will be used. "

The fact of the matter is that we can't simply let it up to "the market" when it comes to things that are generally good for society (especially subgroups within that society that either lack resources, are vulnerable etc..) as it will always be more profitable to simply do the evil thing - slavery is a much more profitable economic system, its cheaper to simply dump your untreated waste where some poor people are rather than paying for it to be treated etc. If we as a society say that people with disabilities deserve to participate, it is going to cost some money to allow them to do so. Its cheaper to build a building that isn't ADA compliant than one that is, or at least at one time etc. Thus, things have to be mandated to some point. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't some ways for society to absorb some of the costs collectively and make good, solid policies that address the needs of all involved. Exceptions, subsidies, upgrades, and other variances are all possible further to deal with individual situations. However, that means we have have the fortitude to stand up to those who argue in bad faith or are blinded by greed to the point that even a minimal hypothetical inconvenience is offensive to them.
 
I have to disagree with the naysayers here. This isn't a case of overreaching government. Game companies should include APIs for interfacing with chat, and provide colorblind modes. It's not that complicated. Mods used to be common in video games, but developers have gotten lazy and greedy.

Developers don't need to spend "25% of their budget" (or whatever other bullshit numbers you want to make up) to comply. They simply need to stop fighting mods and locking down their games to the point of absurdity. Let third party developers handle the actual TTS, contrast, etc. modes using an API that isn't stupid.
 
wizdum said:
I have to disagree with the naysayers here. This isn't a case of overreaching government. Game companies should include APIs for interfacing with chat, and provide colorblind modes. It's not that complicated. Mods used to be common in video games, but developers have gotten lazy and greedy.

Developers don't need to spend "25% of their budget" (or whatever other bullshit numbers you want to make up) to comply. They simply need to stop fighting mods and locking down their games to the point of absurdity. Let third party developers handle the actual TTS, contrast, etc. modes using an API that isn't stupid.
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Ok. All I will say about mod locking is when developers lock their games people bitch that they can't mod them. When they leave them wide open people bitch because the game's size is huge and loading saves/zones take much longer. Also the fact that humanity can't grasp that a mod bug does not constitute a game bug.

Colourblind modes are 90% easy to do. Most companies already did this without legislation in newer games or simply tried to build colour profiles that did not require such modifications in the first place.
Text to speech... not so easy. Its processor usage for one. It also opens a huge can of worms for liability arguments when racist/offensive words are spoken by the system. It also forces you to use whatever chat system the API can handle. This is a problem. What if that chat system doesn't work with your vision of your product? Screw your vision and make recycled crap no one will buy? What if the processor cost to run the API destroys your performance? and Guess what! It might. Everything being "read" has to go to memory. every voice played has to be loaded and played in addition to whatever else the application is doing. TTS isn't remotely simple or performance light. There are a dozen ways to do it and each one has an anchor chain that can cut giant chunks out of your expected resources. The reason that's important is if you require too many resources to do a task you have to start cutting out older machines much sooner than you might otherwise... all for a feature a minority would use.

No one is saying we shouldn't be accommodating(unless they are idiots) but while it is important to not let a majority tell the minority what to do it is also important that you apply as little restriction to the majority for the sake of the minority as well... especially when that minority is small.
This legislation is broad and sweeping with plenty of nooks and crannies to trap developers into boxes. Boxes are bad. You don't want all software to have the same design rules. Video games and operating systems for idiots wouldn't exist if everything was still in the same programming box we all started in.
In the next ten years, I predict a whole new brand of lawyer will pop up sueing every last dime they can out of indy devs who honestly miss a disability group and physically can't reconstruct their product to meet criteria. Heck, we already see MAJOR developers cutting features to avoid dealing with the vague rules presented by this regulation.

Supporting disabilities is important. Forcing it with a ten-ton sledgehammer is just the wrong way to go about it. Progressive and targeted regulation changes would be far more effective and allow actual study in what CAN be done.. and what is too prohibitive to work in the current realities. Right now some of this doesn't have that assurance.. and because of this law, we will now see less support for disabled content by omission until everyone figures that information out.
 
Dregoth said:
Yes because clearly a blind or visually impaired person can't or doesn't have the desire to play video games. /S (and yes that is sarcasm in case you didn't get it)

https://compete.kotaku.com/blind-player-racks-up-a-win-at-his-first-street-fighter-1793936241

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ed-video-game-world-relying-solely-sound.html

https://www.ksl.com/article/4640819...l-followers-advocating-for-more-accessibility


You should all try to educate yourself about what blind or visually impaired individuals are capable of, especially when given tools to assist them.
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Well considering this is an extremely low percentage of visually impaired attempting to play video games....They are not marketed towards those with visual impairments. Just because someone wants to play a heavily visual medium doesn't make the laws and regs have to punish the developers because it doesn't market solely to those who can't see it anyway....

This is the ignorance of laws that want to turn everything into a legal issue.....The government should have ZERO say in what developers of videos put in their games.
 
cyclone3d said:
Really?

So, what if they made a law that since paraplegics have to use wheelchairs that everybody else also has to use wheelchairs?

Or if they made it so since blind people have to use brail to read that brail is the only allowed print?
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We have that in Canada.

Everything has to be bilingual so almost all keyboards sold here are bilingual.
 
RanceJustice said:
The fact of the matter is that we can't simply let it up to "the market" when it comes to things that are generally good for society (especially subgroups within that society that either lack resources, are vulnerable etc..) as it will always be more profitable to simply do the evil thing - slavery is a much more profitable economic system, its cheaper to simply dump your untreated waste where some poor people are rather than paying for it to be treated etc. If we as a society say that people with disabilities deserve to participate, it is going to cost some money to allow them to do so. Its cheaper to build a building that isn't ADA compliant than one that is, or at least at one time etc. Thus, things have to be mandated to some point. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't some ways for society to absorb some of the costs collectively and make good, solid policies that address the needs of all involved. Exceptions, subsidies, upgrades, and other variances are all possible further to deal with individual situations. However, that means we have have the fortitude to stand up to those who argue in bad faith or are blinded by greed to the point that even a minimal hypothetical inconvenience is offensive to them.
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1. Most things, certainly not all, can be left to the market. Bringing slavery into this does nothing but discredit your position. Slavery would not be more profitable in any industry I can think of, and that includes agriculture.
2. What group or sub-groups do you believe would be harmed by leaving markets the hell alone? I can't think of one or any reason for there to be one. If you'd care to elaborate, that would be great.
3. Building under ADA regs is always more expensive. Not just once upon a time. Do you think special bathroom stalls/parking spaces/access requirements/aisle restrictions somehow became cost free?

To reiterate something I said earlier, and I think you'll agree with it.....
If you want business to behave in a certain way, incentivize it.
 
Laowai said:
If you want business to behave in a certain way, incentivize it.
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This sir is the right way to look at business. People always want to punish business but they never seem to understand its like punishing yourself because the increased coast is almost always passed back to the customer.
 
Laowai said:
1. Most things, certainly not all, can be left to the market. Bringing slavery into this does nothing but discredit your position. Slavery would not be more profitable in any industry I can think of, and that includes agriculture.
2. What group or sub-groups do you believe would be harmed by leaving markets the hell alone? I can't think of one or any reason for there to be one. If you'd care to elaborate, that would be great.
3. Building under ADA regs is always more expensive. Not just once upon a time. Do you think special bathroom stalls/parking spaces/access requirements/aisle restrictions somehow became cost free?

To reiterate something I said earlier, and I think you'll agree with it.....
If you want business to behave in a certain way, incentivize it.
Click to expand...

I think it comes down to your definition of "most", which is probably different than mine. However, like I said we're not talking about "most" things, we're talking about cases where the ethical/right/good-for-society choice is less profitable than the alternative, often by far. I think the slavery element holds up just fine, as I was using it as a shorthand for "A workforce you don't have to pay fairly" in my argument versus one you are compelled to do so by law. . We could spend time debating in what forms slavery would be most viable today, but so we don't get off on that tangent replace "slavery" with anything from "indentured servitude", "paying in company scrip", "outsourcing to nations without as many labor rights" or "using labor that, because of their status in one way or another, you don't have to pay in accordance with your labor laws because they won't report you , will accept well below wage, and/or can be coerced" ; simply, the profitable choice versus the ethical one.

2. The Americans with Disabilities Act is just one of many, many, many examples here. There was ample opportunity for "the market" to address the needs of the blind, or those that cannot walk etc... but depending on market forces alone was not enough, clearly. It cost more to make your building accessible/navigable and since the physically disabled are a relatively small group and don't offer an inordinate benefit to businesses financially, it wasn't worth catering to them for most. Leaving it up to the market would mean that most things that are ADA accessible today would not be. Thus, it took a law such as the ADA to require their implementation since market forces were not enough. Nearly ever issue of civil, social, labor, or environmental rights/protection for instance cannot be handled simply be left in the hands of "the market" because they are rarely if ever as profitable, especially short term, as not catering to them without non-market forces at work. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire massacre was caused by the very economically viable choice of locking workers in during their shift, a common practice at the time. Even afterward, market forces didnt facilitate any change, but rather legislation was created to force factory owners not to lock in their workers and otherwise amend treatment thereof, even in the face of owner outcry over loss of profit. Its worth noting that a few years ago in Bangladesh there was a very similarly horrible garment factory fire caused by the same thing, because in a nation without as strong labor laws or whatnot, it is still profitable to simply lock workers in to maximize productivity!

3. Indeed, I agree ADA regulations are more expensive - absolutely. That's the reason we needed that legislation to mandate everyone build under the ADA and thus leveling the playing field (so that those who don't can't have an unwarranted advantage by saving the money that everyone else has to spend etc) so it became the new baseline so to speak. Now, the ADA and related legislation can also include provisions to make it financially easier to implement ADA specifications, and/or deal with individual circumstances such as small businesses in old buildings etc... so while the needs of the business community are also considered, the right to greater profit does not stand above these accessibility requirements we wish for our society.

I believe that incentivizing is certainly one possible option, but many of the troubles nations have faced past and present have been based on treating it as if it is the only one. There are some circumstances where no reasonable amount of "incentivizing" will do and other times when it is more appropriate to use the stick versus the carrot. Treating businesses individually or in aggregate as this lofty, holier than thou temperamental child that needs to be cajoled is unacceptable and is one of many reasons for increasing income inequality and overall bad policymaking. Some people are all to quick to write "But you can't expect businesses to not maximize profit! OMG fiduciary responsibility to shareholders etc'" whenever someone dares suggest they should make certain changes, so in this everyone agrees they simply can't be trusted. Thus, we can't leave it up to the market and need to put down regulations to constrain these entities and force them to abide even unprofitable decisions when necessary. Incentivizing can certainly be a part of the process but it is simply one tool and often it is not sufficient on its own to change behavior; in those cases, we shouldn't be afraid to mandate what is acceptable.
 
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