[games_access] Project idea

Sat Apr 4 08:35:40 EDT 2015

Attached are two drafts: one of an example implementation, and another of a change.org page. As per previous mail the change.org page is under an anonymous unaffiliated account, allowing the request itself to be presented as a single unified call from all people/organisations quoted and all additional signatories.
Any thoughts anyone? On copy and content obviously, but also in particular the idea of using change.org, and thoughts on a sensible core (6 or less) set of core accessibility considerations, which would need to be slightly different for mobile/desktop/console.
I'm 100% with John's thoughts on it.. should be things that are commonly considered, benefit a decent number of people, are hard to misinterpret, and are a simple yes/no to whether they are present (as opposed to something unquantifiable, such as 'easy'). There are a examples of considerations shown in the attachments.

Ian
To: games_access at igda.org
From: i_h at hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 16:47:04 -0700
Subject: Re: [games_access] Project idea

100% agree about binary, criticality etc, something else to bear in mind would be practicality and usability, including more than a small core set would start to hurt usability.

I'm happy to get a quick draft done, it's an area that I've been putting time into anyway. For a group thing to work I think the proposal itself really needs to be unaffiliated, with authority coming from the backers rather than the author, but that's
 easy enough to do.

So how about proven methods, getting a quick change.org petition up, with supporting quotes as part of it? Not aimed at Steam specifically, more a central point of information to be passed on to any storefronts. 

I've spoken with a few and there are wildly varying levels of interest and ability (ranging from 'we will implement it very soon' to 'we have internal politics that prevent it for the time being'), but if there's a quick reference with some authoritative
 quotes on the benefit and some decent numbers of signatories, it should be an easy way for people working on the storefronts firstly to see how valuable it, and secondly help them to sell the idea internally to their colleagues.

Ian

----- Reply message -----

From: "John R. Porter" <jrporter at uw.edu>

To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List" <games_access at igda.org>

Subject: [games_access] Project idea

Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 23:49

I would if I could, but I'm afraid I don't have the time to devote to another project this quarter, since I'm prepping to take my general exam, doing an RAship, and TAing a class (I'm pretty sure that's like the ultimate unadvisable hat trick
 for grad school...). I'm happy to contribute to any effort as my schedule allows, but putting my name down for taking the lead would likely mean no progress on it until late June.

-John

-- -- -- -- --

John R. Porter III

www.jrp3.net

University of Washington,

Human Centered Design & Engineering

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 3:40 PM, Thomas Westin 
<thomas at westin.nu> wrote:

Hi John

it is a great idea and I think that we should aim for the finish line but have your approach as a backup plan?

as I am working with the action list, do you want to take the lead for this?

Kind regards,

Thomas

(Sent from my mobile)

On 2 apr 2015, at 23:43, John R. Porter <jrporter at uw.edu> wrote:

Just to weigh in with my two cents...

Education is obviously critically important, and something we should all be invested in. I don't think anyone can argue that it
isn't vital that developers have a basic understanding of game accessibility, and some common vocabulary/models that we can all use to talk about it.

But I feel like we are talking about two very distinct issues here. There is 1) trying to help gamers make the most informed purchasing decisions they can based on their needs and games' limitations, and 2) working to make those limitations go away. The
 latter is obviously our goal, ultimately, but it's also something that can't happen overnight, in a week, a month, or even a year. That's why short-term solutions (adaptive controllers, input modifiers, etc.) can be just as important as chipping away at the
 root problem. So I say yeah, this is definitely something we should take a shot at. It shouldn't be the ONLY thing being done, but it's a tangible step in the right direction.

In response to your comments, Ian:

For sure, I agree that direct integration is far superior in almost every conceivable way to depending on an extension. My only reason for suggesting that approach was that, as I said, I know this idea has come up multiple times over the years from people
 with far better connections than my own. So, I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that the pitch had been made to Valve at some point without success. Working with a noncommercial group, such as Enhanced Steam, seemed like a tenable building block. Something that we
 can do right now, without requiring Valve's participation, to clearly demonstrate that this is viable.

That being said, I'm all for skipping straight to the finish line if you think it's doable!

Coming back around to Sandra's concerns in a way, though, a unified understanding of accessibility is going to be critical here. Subtitles are a fairly obvious binary (with some gray area, but you get the idea), so it's easy enough to trust a developer
 to say "yes, we have them" or "no, we don't." Beyond that, things get much trickier. What factors go into accessibility? How many of them can be expressed as binaries or on a very simple continuum?

In my mind, the first step for something like this will be to agree as a community on a core list of things that we would want to see Steam present information on. Probably by looking at existing guidelines (e.g. Game Accessibility Guidelines, Includification,
 etc.), distilling a master list of concrete features, and then sorting them based on criticality for play, simplicity for developers to accurately self-report, and so on.

-John

-- -- -- -- --

John R. Porter III

www.jrp3.net

University of Washington,

Human Centered Design & Engineering

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 2:04 PM, Sandra Uhling 
<sandra_uhling at web.de> wrote:

Hi, I highly recommend to provide a basic understanding of game accessibility first.

This is my point of view:

It is our responsibility to provide high quality and practical information. We have about 12 parallel existing recommendations.

When we want them to avoid barriers, we have to enable them.

I feel bad when I think about the situation with ubisoft and "subtitle". We had already lots of information, but did we support them?

I wish for information that supports them very well.

Regards Sandra

-- 

Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 
WEB.DE Mail gesendet.

Ian Hamilton <i_h at hotmail.com>schrieb:

Absolutely agree about the value, though obviously it would be better if it could be implemented into Steam itself rather than needing an extension.... And I actually think it would be easy enough to get that done. 

There's already a precedent set, in 2013 a deaf woman in the UK started a 
change.org petition for Steam to add information on closed captioning - https://www.change.org/p/steam-please-list-subtitle-options-on-the-store-page

It got some decent coverage, e.g MCV, and within a couple of weeks Steam went ahead and added it. Not just as information though, but as a filter, so on Steam's game listings you can now choose to display only the games that have captions.

So the functionality is all there actually there already (and is used for other info outside of accessibility too), it's just a case of adding additional filters.

The data wouldn't need to be crowdsourced either, the existing captioning box is filled out by developers. The lure of extra discoverability and fear of low ratings should be enough to encourage it to be filled in, and filled in accurately. So long as
 it is based on individual features, unlike the Windows store's single 'accessible' tickbox, which isn't helpful info and is regularly misused.

As I see it at least, the ideal setup would be a set of tick boxes for the most common features, and an optional free text field for any additional considerations. The common features displayed with symbols on the game page itself (in the same way as what
 was implemented on IndieCity due to Lynsey's work), and also linked to allow filtering, the glittering also possible from the game listing pages, and the contents of the free text field just displayed on the game page.

I found the right person there to talk to at Steam about adding some more in for other common considerations such as colourblind friendliness (inc. CBF by default, not just modes), remapping, etc. 

She seemed pretty interested but ultimately it'll be a question of priorities, how far up the backlog it comes compared to everything else they need to do. 

So again I completely agree, a joint request from a few bodies would have far more weight than just me suggesting it, and get it shunted further up the backlog.

Shall we make it happen then? 

Ian 

----- Reply message -----

From: "John R. Porter" <jrporter at uw.edu>

To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List" <games_access at igda.org>

Subject: [games_access] Project idea

Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 19:59 

Hey all,

I had an interesting thought about a possible project we could consider, but it's not something I (at least for the next few months) have time to push on personally, so I figured I'd toss it out here and see if it stuck.

Over the years, the suggestion repeatedly pops up of having information about different accessibility features clearly listed in digital storefronts – in particular, Steam. Everyone seems to universally agree this is an awesome idea, but one that has significant
 hurdles. Most obviously, it's dependent on convincing Valve to actually do it. And while this isn't impossible, the fact that it hasn't happened yet means it's not a trivial request.

A couple days ago, in a research seminar I run, one of the undergrads told me about an awesome tool he uses called Enhanced Steam. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a browser extension that
 automatically kicks in whenever you are viewing a product in the Steam store, augmenting the page by adding additional information. Right now, it's things like historical price trends, time to beat, third-party widescreen certifications, and so on. But generally,
 it just aggregates information from elsewhere on the Internet. 

So my thinking is this: why don't we explore the possibility of getting accessibility information integrated into Enhanced Steam? From what I can tell, that would essentially require two steps. First, we would need to build the data source. We'd likely
 need to crowdsource it's population, but there are definitely ways to pull it off. Second, we would need to get Enhanced Steam to buy in and add accessibility information as a pane on product pages. If the data is there, I also don't think this would be difficult,
 especially if the request was made jointly (IGDA+AbleGamers+SpecialEffect+etc.).

The way I see it, the benefit of this would be twofold. First, it would be a tool of immediate utility. If all you need to do is install a free extension to get access to this information, then it's going to be a boon to a lot of people. And second, I
 think it could be a powerful proof of concept. Even just getting it working for a limited selection of games could show Valve in a very tangible way that the idea is worth getting behind. Maybe they want to continue pulling from a community data source, maybe
 they decide to formalize it internally. Who knows. But either way, it would be a win.

Thoughts? I'm running purely on caffeine the moment, so apologies for my rambling :/

-John

-- -- -- -- --

John R. Porter III

www.jrp3.net

University of Washington,

Human Centered Design & Engineering 

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