Forums are unfriendly to visually impaired people!

I want to address something that makes really hard to use the forums. I am a visually impaired person, in the terms that i can not distinguish certain colors very well. The light grey on white text field is unreadable for me. And i have to highlight the text to even read what I've typed. Please address this!

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Kesthely

Noaani wrote: »

You've attacked me somewhat directly in your above post, you've attacked my position. As such, you now need to back up your attack on me by saying what is wrong with suggesting that 14 year old look for that community - the one that has people that have lived with this condition their whole life, and likely has specialists spending time there a well.
.

Because your ignorant. You don't know how difficult it is for people with this kind of condition to even navigate the internet in the first place. I'll tell you what the journey is to even get on such a website for a 14 year old and maybe then you'll be less ignorant and realise that beeing able to post exactly what is wrong in detail is a unique acomplishment.

Step 1) Convince your parents / guardians that you will be able to use a computer, and that its not a waste of money. Taking care of someone with impairments costs a lot of money, trowing a few hundred to thousand(s) of dollars away for a computer is likely not in their budget.
Often the parents / guardians already have a computer if so go directly to step 2

Step 2) Creating a user profile that you can actually navigate your computer. The standard settings are to small / similar colord to be able to properly see, so you need someone else to do this for you until you have satisfatory settings. This takes time and a lot of patience, since its difficult to describe what you want if you don't know / can read what the options are.

Step 3) you've got a computer that you can navigate great, now you need additional help because the standard browsers don't have nearly enough settings to work for you. If your lucky then you have a proffesional caretaker that knows tools and browsers for you to use, but using that caretaker for that costs money and there not cheap so often the parents / guardian will do that. Because they don't know what they are searching for, and you don't know yet what you need, its searching for long hours and testing out a lot of different browsers. But eventually you find one thats customizable enough for you to work.

STep 4) A lot of sites are not compatible for your viewing / browser, you need plugins to be able to emulate different media, and screensizes. then a lot of the laws prevent you from adjusting certain things, so you need a crawler, you need a working vpn in some cases, and you need to finetune these plugins. At this time you've spend hours if not days already trying to get things to work. it has costed you quite some money already, since most of these custom browsers aren't cheap, and if you used your paid caretaker he doesn't work for free. If its your parents / guardian, they probably are on the end of their nerves already, if the've not given up entirely.

Step 5) Get notice of the game. Some games are totally unplayable. Some seem obvious but even the simplest games can sometimes bedifficult to play. So you see / hear about a game that could potentially be something you can play. You conclude that you can, so your eager to ask your questions and talk to the community. Excited to play the (existing or upcomming) game. Luckily most questions are in the FAQ, and others are in other parts that you can find. But there are still some questions. You want to ask them, go to the forums, and then start typing.

This is od, there are no letters forming? you dont'know if your in the correct field, so you move your mouse trying to find where the curser is. You click the text field, and start typing again. Still nothing. You have to go ask your parent/ guardian to see whats wrong, they haing good eye sight say theres nothing wrong. Your confused. Has my eyes gone even worse? why can't i see, you panic a bit, and then start testing more things. and finally find out that its a color that you can't see. Ok i got tool A for that. I'll fix that.

Error. Tool B then? Error Tool C Error you go trough all your current tools and they are many. Nothing works. So you go search for the problem. Is your browser / tools out of date? you update them. Still nothing. You go to search the problem, and finally you come up with a solution that is old school but works. At least now you can see what you can type.

Ofcourse you've forgotten your initial question by now, your angry frustrated, why does it have to be so hard, i just want to play this game. So you go back to the forums and complain. You omit that you've spend hours of testing to fix it, because you know whats causing the problem. You explain the issue tell them what your complaint is, and after a reply you even specify options. Some offer different solutions to see it, you ignore them cause they don't know how much time you've already spent in getting things in working order for you. You just want the devs to be aware of the issue, and wonder if its an oversight or not. Because if its not an oversight, then your afraid these kinds of problems will be troughout the game and it will make the game unplayable for you.

And then you come in and offer your "Advice"

I hope your a little less ignorant of the hurdles now, and understand my spirited response.

Ps: Myself i was 12 when my parents bought a pc after 2 years of begging and pleading. Mom Dad, i thank you for the countless of hours that you spend learning how to use it so you could teach me. And even the countless more hours of helping me with my problems whatever they were. Thanks to you i've been able to work in ICT for 11 years now, but each time i try a new game, i'm back beeing that 12 year old boy, and enjoying the hell out of it.

Edit: In case you haven't realized by now, your "Hypothetical" situation is daily life for me

Noaani

Kesthely wrote: »

In case you haven't realized by now, your "Hypothetical" situation is daily life for me

I realized this with the OP. It doesn't change my point.

Depending on what your impairment is (I'm not asking, I don't care), there probably would not have been online communities for it 20 or so years ago when this may have applied to you. Your parents had to do things the hard way. Sucks for you, sucks more for them.

Now, however, that 14 year old will have these communities, communities filled with people like yourself, who they can use as resources to get information from. I should note, I am somewhat surprised you seem to not already frequent such a community - you would do more good for people in your situation from within such a community than you would by posting that individual websites should change things.

So, while you are sitting here and saying I am being ignorant, what I am really saying is that should someone with the same impairment as you come to these forums, they should talk to you - or someone like you - and not me.

Wow, what an absolute dick that makes me - suggesting people go to places where they can find actual information to actually help them with actual issues they actually have, knowing full well that me attempting to help them any more than that is a waste of their time as well as mine, and likely makes the person feel belittled.

I get you're pissed off at something. That's fine. However, take a look at what it is I am saying here - an objective look. I am saying that someone with an impairment should talk to others with the same impairment in order to get advice and tips on how to better do things that the impairment in question makes more difficult.

I am saying this, and you are calling me ignorant (among other things) for saying this. Are you saying that this 14 year old should not seek out others with this same impairment in order to find real and actual assistance? Or are you just bitter because these communities didn't exist when you were younger?

Kesthely

@nooani

I never said your a dick, i said you were ignorant. With this condition you are born. A 14 year old has had to deal with it for 14 years already. Your ignorance stems of the fact that you don't realize how difficult it is to convince others that you can function online, that they don't need to hold your hand or look over your shoulder, that you just want to be a normal teenager, doing normal teenager stuff.

Your ignorant because the fact that there already there means they already have all the tools to get there. They need to because its not as easy as you imagine without them. They have dozens of support groups and communities already. But they don't want to go to yet another support group, they want to be a normal kid doing normal stuff.

Your ignorant because you have no idea how degrading and belitteling it is to have people like you day in dey out tell you what to do, how to "improve" yourself or your life or what you do is "wrong" or "insufficient"

Your ignorant becaue your truelly believe your helping. But your not. Next time that you see an impaired person, or an old person, don't try to help them. Instead ask them: Is there anything i can help you with? 95% of the time the awnser will be no thank you. If they do ask you for somethign help them with that, and only that. We have mouths if we need help we'll ask.

Let us keep our dignity.

How would you feel if a total stranger takes your hand to "help" you over a road crossing while your waiting for the light to go green. How would you feel if a waitress asks you "Do you need help, shall i feed you?" How would you feel if an 80 year old woman, stands up from her seat at the bus to give it to you, as if she doesn't need it more then me. Then imagine that if that happens daily, every single day of your life.

So yes i'm angry at things. And yes i could talk to my psychiater about it, or one of my online groups. But that only helps me. It doesn't make you aware that what your doing is causeing more problems. Is makeing us feel worse about ourselves. Its confrontations like this that are helpfull. They make you, and everyone who reads it aware of whats going on and why your "good samaritan" behavior is actually negatively affecting us.

Sure my communication is riddled with anger, resentment and that makes it hard to get the point across. because your "good behavior" is far more deprimental than you realize. I've had friends that got depressed because of the constant "helping" felt that they were a burden, not worth living. and ended up killing themselves.

So its ok for me to do this. Because there might be someone with the same or a different impairment that thinks. Wow he's telling him exactly how he feels about it. Its ok to be angry, its ok to shout at someone that you don't need there "help"

So yes i keep calling you ignorant, because you don't experiance it like this. You can't and you know what. Thats good. i hope you remain ignorant for the struggles of what it means to live with most impairments / diseases / conditions. and remember:

Ignorance is bliss

Noaani

Kesthely wrote: »

I never said your a dick, i said you were ignorant. With this condition you are born.

I never said you called me one, I said you called me ignorant. It seems to me that you are too worked up to actually read right now.

---

Fun fact though, most people with a visual impairment didn't have it at birth.

If we are talking about someone that is on a website for a game, and is having trouble with it, I am going to assume that this person is somewhat new to either the Internet, or to the impairment they have.

This is because if they were not new to one - or both - of these things, they would have a solution worked out.

Remember, you yourself said many times that solutions are out there.= for your specific impairment, and I know for a fact they are out there for many others, as well.

So, while it was indeed an assumption, I did assume that our hypothetical 14 year old was new to either their impairment or the internet. However, as an assumption, that is as valid (if not statistically more valid) than the assumption that they had this impairment since birth.

Remember, our hypothetical 14 year old is not a young version of you.

Kesthely wrote: »

Let us keep our dignity.

I agree, and that is why I am not trying to over step things by offering this 14 year old "assistance" in regards to a matter I may well know less about than many others out there. Rather, I am suggesting they find those others out there that are more qualified to help. Not carers, not doctors (well, perhaps doctors), but other people with this same impairment.

If a stranger tried to help me cross the road, I'd tell them to fuck off. That is why I am not trying to help the 14 year old cross the road, and even got in to a debate with the person that said they would (the person you then defended).

Kesthely wrote: »

They make you, and everyone who reads it aware of whats going on and why your "good samaritan" behavior is actually negatively affecting us.

Again, I am not the one doing this - I am the one telling others to not do this, for the exact reasons you state here.

I think you got your wires crossed somewhere. You saw me disagree with you, and seem to think that this makes me the enemy in this thread - without you actually paying attention to what I am saying.

Kesthely wrote: »

Ignorance is bliss

Ignorance is ignorance, bliss is bliss.

I have no doubt I am ignorant in regards to your specific issue, and perhaps even to the hypothetical 14 year old. However, as we don't know what impairment this hypothetical 14 year old actually has (you have assumed it is the same impairment as you, but this has not been established), it may well be that I am actually more understanding of that specific impairment than you, making you the ignorant one in this specific situation.

However, since it is a hypothetical situation, this point need not be clarified and really doesn't matter.

I don't care if you keep calling me ignorant. If anything, that is kind of just showing your ignorance on other matters. However, that is not the point I am trying to get across to you.

What I am trying to get across to you is the fact that you have seen someone say that - given the situation arising - they would suggest to someone that appears to be new to a specific impairment that they have to look up communities of others with that impairment in order to find support, tips and advice.

This is what you are labeling as ignorant - not me. You can't be calling me ignorant, because literally all you know about me is that I would do the above in the hypothetical situation we are talking about, and as such you are calling the above action ignorant.

I'm still waiting for you to tell me what is wrong with suggesting this 14 year old look for a community of others with the same impairment as they have.

Kesthely

@Nooani

If there is a 14 year old with a visual impairment that comes along to these forums and has issues

As far as i can tell, the only issue wiith the forums is exactly the problem that i talk about. So on your quote: "came to THESE forums to complain," it would be the exact same condition. Which is a birth defect.

So no you can't worm your way out of your own hypotetical situation by trying to change some parameters.

Child Item