Game Accessibility |

Fighting for What’s Right and The People Our Words are For

[just as on twitter, these are my personal thoughts, not my employer’s]

I’m going to talk about something difficult, and rarely talked about (as usual). I straddle an unusual line: I stepped into a full time game developer role at a large company after having spent more than a decade as an advocate/activist in games accessibility. The last 5 years as a freelance consultant. At first as a player/disability consultant, then a specialist and designer.

I learned a lot in my early “angry” days, I continue to learn, and I want to share. I wrote about educating with kindness for global accessibility awareness day 2019. It was short, and it came at a time when I finally felt at peace with my approach and how difficult it can be.

A gave a talk at the Games Accessibility Conference in March 2018. This talk taught me a hell of a lot about how to find power in vulnerability. I went on to expand it to an hour (with further design insights) and gave it so many times over the 18 months after, that I lost count. It was a Love Letter.

Eventually it evolved to something almost unrecognizable: my short 101 accessible design talk. I still give a version of this to teams at Ubisoft, but these latest versions are quite far from the original Letter.

When I first wrote and gave it, it was from the perspective of a “Disabled Gamer”. The first title?

“A Fraught Love Letter To the Games Industry From a Disabled Gamer”

The important part is that it was fraught. Even through its evolutions toward the perspective of being a disabled developer, it was still “A Fraught Love Letter”. The origins are important for what I’m about to say.

For the duration of 2017 I was at the cusp of transitioning from player-consultant/subject matter expert, to specializing in game design, UX and accessibility. I was crossing the divide from player to developer so I was lucky to have insight into how games development works thanks to mentorship and various jobs I’d had. Still, it was really important to me, and GA Conf, nearly 3 years ago, that this talk was from the perspective of me as a player. This is something developers weren’t getting to hear much at the time, and a vital part of the work GA Conf does is give a voice to the people accessibility is for.

Since many in our quickly growing community have no idea what this talk was, or why I’m setting the scene with it — it was celebrated for how powerful it was. I had no idea that’s how it would land, and I surprisingly didn’t set out to even try for that. I don’t think? It was my first solo talk and I had 3 weeks to come up with the concept and prepare. I was asked to close out the day and share something about my experiences. I watched Brandon Cole’s talk from the previous (first) year as prep, and I thought, “oh cool, right, just tell my story”.

So I did that, but it was hard. It wasn’t the fun, funny, affectionate story Brandon told because that wasn’t how I felt, at all. I was hurting, but even so, still deeply in love and fighting for change. I was terrified to give it. I wrote it, practiced it, but was truly petrified it would land horribly and I’d be kicked out of gaming forever.

A lot of the things I got up on stage and said weren’t really being said much in public at the time. I’m not one for holding back, or social filters, so I just told my whole truth. From my physical to my cognitive disabilities, how I grew up, what it feels like to live on the edge of society — isolated and barely surviving a body that tried to die, more than once. It was also about everything games give me; the freedom, experiences, community, and pain management.

I knew it was going to be personal and raw. I didn’t expect to be quite so emotional, and I never expected the praise or response it got. I remember when everyone stood to cheer and clap as I said those final words! I couldn’t quite believe I had so much support for something so hard to say — you, this room of people, and our industry, hurt people like me, but I love you.

So, I don’t say it was “powerful” to brag. I say it because it’s a fact — to this day people still tell me how it affected them so deeply.

So, yes, I got up there, and told the industry how much I was hurting. I don’t think it was so powerful just because it was my story, although that is what gave me passion. It wasn’t even that my legitimately difficult to voice personal story was juxtaposed with design advice and insight on barriers. It was something else.

I believe it was powerful because, yes, I was declaring my love for an industry that was hurting me, but it was framed with the acknowledgement that this industry is people. Specifically, spelling out one concept:

Empathy is a two way street.

I had been hurt, shut-out, and marginalized for too long. I was so fed up, and I was hurting so much, but I knew there were growing numbers of developers listening, working hard, fighting the systems of injustice with me, and ultimately who C A R E. That room was the core of them, and I knew it wasn’t enough for me to be seen. I had to see them too. The hard, exhausting, imperfect work, the injustices they were up against, and just how much they were trying (and improving) needed to have a light shone back. It needed to be said loudly, visibly.

I think today, as the games accessibility movement grows, this is the thing a lot of people forget, or maybe they don’t realize in the first place. It’s not simply left out of “critique” or feedback, but there are some actually going so far as to say the complete opposite, either blatantly, or subtly.

Either we don’t care, we’re not trying, we deliberately exclude, or obliviously and carelessly make mistakes. There’s little room for nuance or acknowledgement. Everything is all or nothing; pass or fail. One of the things I push hardest for is to avoid the pass/fail lens because games accessibility, more than any, is extremely complicated and dynamic. It’s about solutions, design. It’s not just about options. Sometimes, a solution to a barrier for one player may even lead to barriers for others, or the solution for one player isn’t even the same one for another with the same disability.

Other times I think there’s a little too much tendency for the assumptions that the exact solution is obvious based on what’s been done in other completely different games with completely different technical and production constraints. This leads to some players making straight up demands, where game accessibility by necessity needs to be a process, a collaboration between many different creatives. For the most part I think we’re actually still finding our way and if we could get a little breathing room we’d find even better solutions.

Of course, there’s a balance — it’s vitally important to remember that disabled people are experts in our experiences (especially the barriers we face, why, and how effective solutions are), that no disability or person is a monolith, and yet, at the same time, players aren’t game designers or experts in UX (unless you make that move — come join me!). See? Nuance, in everything, and collaborative spirits.

I know it’s an adjustment, working full time at any one place, and I know I’m supposed to just take certain things from communities or media and be quiet. It’s not just accessibility, it’s gaming as a landscape.

It’s the done thing — developers get “harsh” criticism all the time and we’re supposed to pretend it’s fine and we’re tough. But, I don’t think we should have to cope in silence. I know there’s a power dynamic, but it’s not as straightforward as other parts of society, and plenty of developers are disabled too. The lines are blurrier, the systems are messier.

Even before I went full time I wrote about this a fair amount. Developers are people. Using studio, or publisher names, we’re still talking about people. The things we say are seen by the ones who care the most, who are often doing the hardest work, and stretching themselves thin to make it happen.

It hurts to be shut out, it actively marginalizes and harms people. It’s a result of systemic oppression and lifetimes of ableism deeply woven through societies, and the systems we’ve contributed to as people.

Undoing that is exhausting, hard, stressful, emotional work. You know who’s working to undo it? Games developers.

Developers also have to work within systems and they have to twist, shape, and define systems; social, bureaucratic, and technical. There are so many constraints and difficult to decisions to make I don’t even want to get into them.

The exact complexities of making games, working with multiple technologies, prioritizing features, and working with flawed systems isn’t the point of why I’m writing this. The feedback, “critique”, and the work that’s done to educate developers is invaluable. Without it games accessibility would have faltered long ago and gotten it more wrong than right. It changes the damn world. It’s powerful, magic, and without it none of this movement would be happening.

But, I caution — if we burn the people out who are doing that work by making assumptions about them as people, the work itself, how the business works, the technology it’s built in, their intentions, how they made the mistakes they did, or the (frankly, very difficult) decisions that are being made, we risk losing them. There’s a lot that can burn us out in this long, hard work, and this contributes.

Most end up putting distance between themselves and their audiences, which can make it harder to get it right. Relationships and trust are the invisible glue of this industry.

My “angry” days were nothing compared to how some behave, speak, or write. I joke about how I’ve always been a shitposter, but I’ve also tried my best to approach it with humor and humanity. Affection, too. Most importantly, as balanced and even handed as I can muster.

There are times where I was frustrated, tired, hurting from being shut out of gaming, again. In those times I was often straight to the point, factual, it wasn’t “kind” per se, and had a frustrated tone. I wasn’t always successful in my approaches, and I know I alienated myself because I was “harsh”.

Despite this, there were two things I did my best check in on — 1. Avoiding assumptions and accusations of any kind. 2. Broad, sweeping statements about the overall level of accessibility in a game or not. The most basic check “am I making an assumption about these developers, their process, or the game, and do I really know what I’m saying I do?”. Another, “am I making a broad claim that could be misinterpreted about the overall accessibility, the efforts of the team, or am I speaking as clearly as possible that this is from my perspective, experience, and expertise?”

This is what I mean when I say kindness. It’s not a tone of voice (or writing). I will be one of the first to fight for the right to frustration, disappointment, heartbreak, and expressing the pain and harm of exclusion. There’s always room for these emotions and reactions because they’re justified after decades of exclusion.

You know what there isn’t room for? Lashing out, reflecting the pain back on developers, making claims about intention or efforts, dismissing any and all efforts for lack of perfection, being outright cruel in the assumptions, words, and framing used. We talk a lot about toxicity in gaming. There is outright toxicity and then there’s the borderlands where it’s murky but coated in it nonetheless— the almost imperceptible transition from righteous to self righteousness.

There’s ways to deliver feedback and “critique” that’s deliberate, kind, even handed, and fair; recognizing successes in the face of the pursuit of perfection and improvement. It’s a journey. We can say it directly, and to the point. It can even have a tone of frustration, hurt, or the end of a rope. Kindness isn’t tone, it’s about being fair and empathetic in the thoughts that lead us to the words we say. It’s framing and perspective. It’s being honest with ourselves about when anger is really justified or when it’s not and where we’re directing it.

It’s about working to understand the situation of people who are actually fighting along side us, not against us, they’re likely even one of us at times. It’s reflecting on what we’re saying both directly, and the unsaid between the lines. Ultimately, respect. None of it’s new, but it’s a rising pattern in our space, and I’ve always had the dream that accessibility could be better than other corners of gaming.

So many can be quick to make assumptions, jump to conclusions, paint a particular picture on the situation as if it’s gospel. I feel sometimes we may not even realize we’re doing it. It doesn’t matter if using a company name or “the developers”. It’s still (tired and vulnerable) people who have big hearts and creative souls receiving the words, not some distant, mythical god-head. We work so very hard against the exact same systems, but we see and weave among the cogs themselves.

And, I’ll be truly honest: I’ve also failed. None of us are perfect, and we shouldn’t expect perfection of others. I’ve found myself in a space where hectic release schedules, the constant cut-throat grind of of content creation, streaming, social media, toxic gaming spaces, influence from others, and the damn state of the world, and whether I could even exist peacefully that day affects how I communicate, or even how I might perceive a game.

I’ve been in the position of being the squeaky wheel so many times over the years — for example, the one person in a sea of praise saying that Spider-Man PS4 wasn’t cognitively accessible, and not even really physically accessible enough for me. It was enormously stressful, painful, and led to a small meltdown while I streamed. It’s lonely, hard, exhausting. I’m sure there were times in these moments where I didn’t communicate at my best. It’s difficult to ride that knife edge between advocacy, activism, and remembering the people on the other end.

Empathy is a two way street, and I know that very few would mean to hurt. Perfection is not something we should demand from anyone. Still, with love, we can reflect. It’s a journey and we’re all in the same sea.