WHy? It's a entertaiment business not a governmental service. Developing features that 0.1% of users will ever use, same time can be used for bugfixes that help the 99.9%
My partner is ESL, she understands spoken English fine when it's slow and precise, but in the fast environments of TV and Games, it's often hard for her to quickly get what they just said. So, subtitles, the accessibility option for the hard of hearing, is beneficial to her.
Similarly, I may want a more casual gaming experience but experience the same story as someone else - but difficulty is subjective. I may want just a larger reticle so I can see better, reduced motion blur and walking bounces so I don't feel sick.
These little options are a relatively simple addition which benefits absolutely everyone
All I can say is that if you were in a similar situation you would just see this differently, which is an obvious thing to say, I know, but I really mean it. Like, you would with every fiber in your body, just see this entire situation completely differently.
Any way, I don't think there's any harm in asking the "why" question, but it is harmful to ask it rhetorically I guess? I'm not saying that's what you were doing, but I mean just generally speaking, to ask the question as if to make a point assuming the answer is already known. It implies the question doesn't need asking, and the answer is obvious. The real truth couldn't be further from that, but it's kind of hard to understand if you can't experience it for yourself.
Also, I really want to just head off any "truth is subjective" type comments, or "your reality vs my reality". It's like, yes, there is always that, but what I mean is if someone suddenly lost their mobility and had to experience a world suddenly inaccessible, they would just understand what I mean in a way that's deeper than petty rhetoric. It just wouldn't make any sense by that point to pretend that this isn't important.
A lot of them just feel like they're catering to a tiny slice of the user base that would probably be better served in some other way. In some cases, they arguably make things worse for everyone else, like WCAG 1.4.1, mandating that your links have ugly underlines just because some people might have trouble reading them. Fun fact: HackerNews's links are noncompliant, and could get them sued in Canada.
- Color is not used as the sole method of conveying content or distinguishing visual elements.
- Color alone is not used to distinguish links from surrounding text unless the contrast ratio between the link and the surrounding text is at least 3:1 and an additional distinction (e.g., it becomes underlined) is provided when the link is hovered over and receives focus.
Lots of options in there besides just slapping underlines on things. Could be bold where other text isn’t. Could just be a color that stands out enough against your text. Etc.
Sure, you could make links bold, but no one does that for a reason: it looks ridiculous.
The thing that I find particularly egregious about that rule about it is how this doesn't even seem like it helps that many people. A screen reader user would necessarily know that an element was a link regardless of color, and even colorblind users are likely to be able to see that the text is lighter, even if they cannot make out the specific color, particularly if the color used isn't red or green.
I hare designers that chose terrible font sizes and terrible color contrast, do you designers use some extra special screens where light gray on white looks readable?
I am wondering if a site with such fancy designs that look smooth and cool could do an experiment and offer a high contrast, big fonts, no animations version then let the user decides. Maybe we could get some data and see what people that use them able sites use, liek Gmail , do people chose themes with low contrast, many animations and cool looking links?
I hope good designers will prevail in the end and get rid of the form over function crowd, where you need perfect vision and some super expensive screen to be able to proeprly use a web page.
Not a designer but I am a photo nerd, and yes these screens exist
7,675,600 US citizens have visual disabilities. [National Federation of the Blind]
3.7% of all US citizens have fine motor skill disabilities. [NIH]
Also, it's the right thing to do to ensure everyone can experience joy.
Something they haven't said yet is that a lot of accessibility features are already a solved problem, or they're commonplace enough that they seem to be. So a big publisher (which is what your parent was referring to) would be able to get them in at low cost, relative to gigantic overall costs of publishing any AAA game. So it makes sense for them to do it to reach everyone they can. And they know people will write articles like this one and bring them publicity, and if not they'll just astroturf one anyway. The author of that article has had at least one other accessibility-related article published on the gaming web recently, so don't assume they're not just on a press junket.
For all developers, your question is more of a question. Should every single game developed by every single type of developer be "accessible"? It would certainly be nice, but must they? Of course not.
As noted in many introductions to accessibility, these features help more than just the stereotypical example you may think of when hearing that word. There are many forms of accessibility: lifelong, acquired, temporary, chronic, and situational. Between those 5 forms, these features really help everyone.
It’s all about context, consideration, dignity, but mostly, letting the challenge be the puzzle itself instead of the structure of the scaffolding holding the puzzle in place.
[0] Well, I mean, hypothetically these generations might retire in significant numbers around "normal" retirement age, even if the numbers aren't looking so hot for that right now....