[games_access] Fwd: interesting discussion about making SecondLife accessible to the blind

[d. michelle hinn]

Forwarding this for Eelke...interesting timing, as I'm about to guest 
blog about accessibility of MMOGs on Terra Nova.

Hey the American Blind Federation sued AOL...this was bound to happen 
to online games eventually, especially since they are being used in 
classrooms.

Michelle

>ate: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:28:11 -0800
>From: "Eelke Folmer" <eelke.folmer at gmail.com>
>To: "d. michelle hinn" <hinn at uiuc.edu>,
>         "Richard Tol van" <r.van.tol at bartimeus.nl>
>Subject: Fwd: interesting discussion about making SecondLife 
>accessible to the blind
>
>Hey I sent this one yesterday to the games access list but it wasn't
>featured in today's
>mail.
>
>cheers Eelke
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com>
>Date: Jan 9, 2007 3:46 PM
>Subject: interesting discussion about making SecondLife accessible 
>to the blind
>To: games_access at igda.org
>
>
>http://www.it-analysis.com/blogs/Abrahams_Accessibility/2006/11/second_life_class_action.html?mode=full&hilite=13287#CM13287
>
>People seem to have some radical opinions about the subject matter
>(especially with regard to the class action suit):
>
>"Don't get me wrong; I'm all for supporting the rights of the
>disabled, but this is beyond insane. What's next? Should they sue the
>Anderson Window Company for not making windows that verbally describe
>what's going on outside. I mean, really, those windows only work for
>people who can see, right? That's discrimination, right"
>
>Interesting is the response from Joshua Linden (founder linden labs)
>about how Lindenlabs is trying to do their best to follow the W3C
>guidelines but rather decided to make the Second life viewer open
>source so people can write their own viewers which support alternative
>input and output mechanisms such as screen readers. However I believe
>this will only work if accessibility features are supported on the
>server side. E.g. how do you classify & describe an object in
>Secondlife? (e.g. its the same problem with adding meta information to
>images on the word wide web see http://www.espgame.org/)
>
>~ Eelke
>
>
>
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Eelke Folmer                            Assistant Professor
>Department of Computer Science & Engineering/171
>University of Nevada               Reno, Nevada 89557
>Game Quality         usability|accessibility.eelke.com
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Eelke Folmer                            Assistant Professor
>Department of Computer Science & Engineering/171
>University of Nevada               Reno, Nevada 89557
>Game Quality         usability|accessibility.eelke.com
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------