Sony Sued For Discrimination Against the Blind

[DarkLordofDevon]

This will fail. They dont have to Cater for anyone. they are providing a luxury service not a persons right. they have no obligation at all to provide games for anyone, let alone a visually impaired person.

Actually that isn't true. According to law all internet sites must be made accessable by the blind. I'm assuming similar laws apply to other forms of technology. By not providing access for the disabled this can be seen as discrimiatory.

 

[Sonicron]

It's amazing to see what people will sue for. Just amazing.

It's been a while, but let's dredge up a shred of Latin:
videre - (to) see
video - I see

Maybe the guy should sue God or his parents for not being able to see.
Lawsuit = fail.

-EDIT- Crap. Ninja'd on he Latin bit.

 

[Valiance]

So he really can't change the font size? :/

 

[soul_rever38]

as a games programmer i can see why he would take them to court over the fact that he cant use certain functions that come with the PS3 as that can easily be changed so when it goes onto said section it will play a audio file which will mention which section it is on, making it easier for the visually impaired and blind to use.

but on the other side, making a 3D game for the blind i can see as a very hard challenge, if it where a 2D game i could understand it, as when i was at College a student in the year above who was blind made a game that blind people could use

 

[IanBrazen]

This will fail. They dont have to Cater for anyone. they are providing a luxury service not a persons right. they have no obligation at all to provide games for anyone, let alone a visually impaired person.

That is very true, but they will likely settle out of court.
Every big company does it, no matter how ridiculous the charges are.
They would rather give money to shut the person up than have their names dragged through the mud in a long and expensive trial.

 

[rokkolpo]

fucking idiots sigh......

why would they make a loss for making games for the blind (or ''visually impaired'',stupid name)

no-one would buy it,not even the blind.

 

[Kiutu]

He should be pestering a japanese robotics company instead to release robotic eye implants (they totally have em secretly I bet) instead of a japanese gaming company.

 

[Vault Citizen]

Gaming is an experience that is for the most part visual, it is a visual medium. If you can't take part in that it is unfortunate but it is not the fault of the people who make the game for making an experience you can't get in on.

 

[Space Spoons]

Gaming is a visual form of media. If you can't see, you can't participate. It's not discriminatory, it's just the way video games work.

Honestly, this is like suing a peanut brittle company for being "less accessible" to people without teeth, or a music company for being "less accessible" to the deaf.

 

[Something Amyss]

So sue american idol for discriminating the deaf and books for dyslexia and driving for blindness? sorry but it's just one of those things, some games are better than others and i don't know the severity of this man's visual impairment but even so, just accept it and find games that can help or don't play. don't blame sony!... i can play guitar hero and i'm colour blind... learn or stop.

Idol discriminates against the hearing, really.

Guitar Hero doesn't really rely on colour. Match the dots on the highway with the correct button. If you can count to five, you're fine. Not exactly the same thing. But while I'm on your examples:

Dyslexia is a poor example, but if you have trouble with language, either due to learning disability or visual impairment, there are a lot of options, from audio books to those little reader devices. Computers have been doing text to speech for decades and it's becoming more common in other applications, too.

Many states in the US and a few countries allow for blind people to become legal drivers. New equipment makes it easier for them to do so. Good idea? I don't know, but it's there.

There's precedent for violation of the ADA here. I'm sorry that seems to piss people off so much, even though it affects them so little to benefit disabled people in limited circumstances.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Wait...People still play Everquest?!

Quite a few.

Much as I think the guy has a point, he's not going to win.

Simply put, trying to find your way around the Auction area in EQ requires you to be aware of multiple sense stimulations at once. There's no way on earth that this could be reduced to only sight or only hearing. Even the text based part of EQ is used to precision on raids that simply couldn't work on sound.

And how would you translate 1337spk into sound? KKTHXBAI~

 

[samsonguy920]

I'm not quite sure but doesn't visually impaired cover a wide spectrum of visual disablilties not just complete blindness, i mean it also covers people who as parshally blind, extreme colour blindness etc etc.

'Blind' is used to cover all sorts of sight impairments, lots of people can be registered as blind but can still see to some degree, just not as well as the majority of people. I imagine that the person who is fighting against Sony will have some vision, obviously enough to see the characters on the screen just not all of the text or finer details of the graphics.

It sounds like a stupid idea but I think it would be looked at differently if it was 'Sony sued for discrimination against the partially sighted'. It is reasonable to put large text in games, but I wouldn't say that it's going to be taken all that seriously in court.

Frankly it should be taken seriously, if this guy does have enough vision to get something out of a computer monitor, why can't Sony provide a mod to make certain things easier to see or tell out? It makes me sick the lack of sympathy that is being projected here. As Tom pointed out, there have been plugins and mods made to make it easier for vision deficiency. I have to wonder why Sony is being so short-sighted. (Okay, that was a pun, but it still fits.) A lot of people in this thread scoff at people with half the vision ability of others, how would you feel if you had only one arm and Logitech and Microsoft refused to make a mouse with more buttons and controls on it to make up for the lack of ability? May as well say that games are only for the super healthy.

 

[Tairan]

WHAT KIND OF IDIOT PLAYS A GAME BLIND?!?! sorry but if u are blind how da hell do u get entertainment from gameing (speicaly gorey games) also why pick on sony who makes games for blind kids?

 

[geldonyetich]

I'm sort of surprised that blind people play mainstream games, seeing how they're largely based off of visual concepts and 3D graphics.

From the sounds of things, Stem doesn't play EQ2 so much as he enjoys participating in the auction portions of the game. It's interesting that he's probably never seen combat in action (outside of reading the combat log - which is a little different because of proximity and whatnot) but he wants to economically trade the items that make up the various parts of it.

 

[tthor]

2 words,:

VIDEO GAME

you can't have the GAME without damn VIDEO, so how can you expect to play VIDEOgames without SIGHT?!

 

[Supernaut565]

Sony is pissing a lot of people off lately.