Access Fandom

Save this link to Annalee Flower's outstanding "Geeks Guide to Disability." I think it's a great resource for folks who are wondering why there are issues beyond just getting into the con.

http://thebias.com/2016/02/16/the-geeks-guide-to-disability/

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I’m hoping that if I walk through some of the more common misconceptions, I can move the needle a little–or at least save myself some time in the future, because I’ll be able to give people a link instead of explaining all this again.

[… snip …]

The science fiction community tends to take this diluted version of the medical model to extremes. Because we’re used to speculating about abilities that humans could have if certain fictitious conditions were met, some of us consider all human bodies fundamentally broken. It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that, for example, since being able to fly unaided would be really cool and convenient, we must all be disabled because we can’t fly.

Here’s the thing, though. Because we can’t fly, we have built a world that is accessible to people who cannot fly. We build roads and sidewalks to facilitate ground travel and elevators to provide access to tall buildings.

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Video Game Accessibility: A Legal Approach
George Powers, Vinh Nguyen, Lex Frieden

The authors all work at the Southwestern (U.S.) ADA Tech Assistance Center, so they're familiar with the law and its limitations. They believe a legal approach would result in more, lasting access.

Video game accessibility may not seem of significance to some, and it may sound trivial to anyone who does not play video games. This assumption is false. With the digitalization of our culture, video games are an ever increasing part of our life. They contribute to peer to peer interactions, education, music and the arts. A video game can be created by hundreds of musicians and artists, and they can have production budgets that exceed modern blockbuster films. Inaccessible video games are analogous to movie theaters without closed captioning or accessible facilities. The movement to have accessible video games is small, unorganized and misdirected. Just like the other battles to make society accessible were accomplished through legislation and law, the battle for video game accessibility must be focused toward the law and not the market.

Full article in Disability Studies Quarterly
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4513/3833