WOW (EQ 2.0 really) can be frustrating on some fights and your response to hit the right key is about half a second. The average fight requires alot of conditional movement and keys for abilities. The class abilities might be strategy based but the movements are more about reacting to pixels on the screen, like a monkey hitting a switch for food at the right time.

I found a good mouse and keyboard with the right macros helps deal with my reaction time. Mindless repetition helps too.

But when dealing with a handicap you have to think about what is the easiest way I can cut down required reaction time in terms of game strategy. For healing , it was eliminating the need to target anyone. Using an addon to mouse over a player’s name (with lots of information on that players state) and just pressing a mouse key makes up for my lost reaction time.

Another “trick” I do on some fights since I have issues knowing left from right is to face right or left a little and then I know if I someone yells left I know its not the way I am facing.

Still it frustrates me that over time (and better latencies) MMO’s are going more for mindless twitch over strategy. I do not for instance understand how anyone with any serious reaction impairment (mind is very slight, except for the left /right thing) can play these games.

For me the things that helped are 1) Visual UI (grid is amazing for showing you everything about a player for instance in a very small area)

2) Devices that minimize your brains need to do complex things. For example mousing over a player and hitting a button on your mouse might seem like the same amount of work as clicking on the player and hitting a key with your other hand but its not. For me using one hand vs 2 is big reaction saver HUGE (I would guess at least 3 times the latency). I think its reaction vs my less efficient brain figuring out the 2 hand thing.

Really, not too much – the point of my article was Things We Can DO, not helpless handflapping. So I’ll still write the piece, and include a link to this.

http://www.massively.com/2009/04/09/do-developers-consider-disabled-gamers-enough/

Educating programmers about common problems is good, but I wouldn’t require them to program for a specified list of disabilities. I know at work we’re recommended not to use red and green on a chart since that’s the most common form of colour-blindness (although in itself is relatively rare).

Also I think there’s a serious point in Centuri’s comment on arachnophobia vs colour-blindness. While trying to cater for all people is good, there are diminishing returns – each smaller group of needs that gets addressed adds costs to everyone else. There is a point where the developer has to say that catering for a specific disability isn’t economically viable for them. This is where I see the UI customisation coming in, as while it may not be viable for the developer there is often a fan somewhere willing to develop a mod for free to cope. After all, there’s lots of fan language translation efforts out there, why not disability mods as well?

Hmm, typing hghghghg still feels natural…..

Ah, the good old days.

I had “nearest object” bound to H and ‘get’ to G – so Decathalon-esque tapping of hghghghghghghghghghghghg picked up any loot in range.

Inventory management could be tricky without a mouse – but surely you could have an accessibility mode where you tab into the window and select items with arrow keys… then a keyboard command to do the left/right click with context menus.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/

Under the daily comic is a petition more games to include subtitles for deaf gamers. The petition can be found at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Captions/petition.html

I hope this will also help raise some awareness.

http://www.massively.com/2008/04/28/player-vs-everything-gaming-with-a-disability/

Tab targeting in general takes care of NPC interactions, but is a lot harder to use for looting, especially when you have 25 dead bodies and 5 live ones… tab could really get messy there.

I think voice commands are really the next step in accessibility, not to mention general ease of use and fun. Granted, your husband/wife will probably get tired of hearing you say “Attack Orc” every 5 minutes for 12 hours, but someone will figure out a way to make it work. Speech interpretation could really handle a lot of interface issues… “Loot Corpse”, “Buy Bread”, “Bake Bread”, “Crush”.

Sorry, got off on a flashback tangent there…

Tio