[games_access] Closed captioning survey, new info, request for contacts

[michelle hinn]

Hi Reid,

I'm fighting with a bout of pneumonia right now -- sorry about the delay.

The survey idea sounds good -- looking forward to seeing it! With regard to
Microsoft, I do have people that I can contact about line 21. I'll send off
an email to them to see what ideas they have. I think that what we're
learning is that the policies often come from concerns about something
altogether different and that publishers, etc don't realize that they are
preventing a route to accessibility. Like I said, I can see what I can find
out. I think that I might also be able to find a contact for Sony and with
some digging we could probably get to someone from Nintendo. But I'll start
with Microsoft first since I have personal connections there who might be
able to help us out.

Michelle

-----Original Message-----
From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Reid Kimball
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 11:22 PM
To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
Subject: [games_access] Closed captioning survey, new info,request for
contacts

Several issues I want to touch on...

I've gotten my hands on some survey software for websites. Pretty soon
I'll generate a list of survey questions, forward to the group for
feedback and create the online web survey based on final comments.
Hopefully, this could be used to gather really important data on
closed captioning or other areas of game accessibility issues.

I've been posting a bit on the deafgamers.com website and someone
mentioned that console manufacturers have TCRs/TRCs as a check list of
what must be included in the game from the developers before the game
is shipped. What if we could convince MS, Nintendo and Sony to
included closed captioning or other accessibility options onto their
TCRs, etc for the next gen consoles?

I've always wondered if consoles are able to take advantage of current
captioning capabilities on TVs via line 21 of the video signal.
Captions on TV are encoded on that line and when the TV has captions
enabled, it decodes the information on line 21 and displays the text.
To me, it seems that in theory it should work for console games.
HOWEVER, apparently console manufacturers forbid developers from using
line 21 of the video signal. Why? I don't know and we should find out.
Does anyone have contacts at MS, Sony, Nintendo so we can ask them? I
think it's pretty absurd they don't allow developers to use line 21 of
the video signal.

-Reid
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