Haha, oh, right, blogging. Oh, and some content too!

Ugh, sorry all you people out there who check this site. All 2-3 of you daily visitors. Except for about a week ago when I got a huge spike for some reason. Checking my blog statistics, it seems everyone was crazy for phocomelia that day. Who knows. Anyway, I’ve been a combination of busy and frustratingly non-busy, so I haven’t blogged. So, here is a quick update.

I started writing for AbleGamers.com, which is an awesome website for gaming resources, especially for disabled gamers. I’m going to be a jerk and totally plug my stuff written over there now, just so you guys can go read it.

Here’s a review I did of Space Invaders Extreme 2.
Review of Scribblenauts.
Review of Rhythm Heaven.
Review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.
My look at Bayonetta.
My look at Dante’s Inferno.
My excitement over GameX.

Speaking of GameX, it was incredibly awesome. For those not in the know, and who didn’t click the link above, it’s a game expo and media conference. And I got to go as a member of the press. It was ridiculously amazing. As I mentioned above, I got to try out same games, talk to some industry folk, and meet some really cool people.

Now that all that is out of the way, I guess I should say a bit more, maybe comment on some news. In fact, let’s talk about this little tidbit right here. By now, it’s old news, but still. It deserved to be mentioned.

Now, as a disabled gamer, adaptation and accommodations are very important to me. But, I feel it’s pretty obvious what this guy’s motivations are. Now, there are plenty of games out there that could easily do accessibility changes. Games that don’t offer the ability to change their controls? They could do that. Games that neglect to include subtitles, alienating deaf gamers? Easily fixed. Games that rely on colors hard for the colorblind to see? PC gaming has fixed that problem a lot of the time with overlays on colored switched, symbols, and buttons. Consoles, not so much.

As I’ve posted about previously, I can’t play the vast majority of Wii titles due to not being able to hold the Wiimote and nunchuk at the same time. Now, could some games benefit from a one-piece controller similar to a Gamecube controller with motion sensitivity? Yes. Definitely. Is this going to happen? Probably not, but it’s a plausible request. Are all games going to do this? No. And in fact, some can’t. Some games rely on the motion sensitivity of both parts of the controller. While there are some that only use one, and still others that are ports of games existing on other consoles (meaning that making it so added-in motion controls can’t be disabled so the game can be played with a normal controller is kind of ridiculous), not all games fall into this category.

Every disabled person is going to run into games they can not play. In fact, every person is regardless of… ableness, or whatever word is appropriate to use here. Maybe for the life of you, you just can’t understand fighting games. Maybe 3D games make your head hurt. Maybe you’re allergic to jiggle physics. Whatever the case may be, you don’t sue a company because their game isn’t specifically tailored to you. Especially because the company in question, Sony, has made adaptations to games to meet needs of disabled gamers.

The most ridiculous part of all this, of course, that part of his claim is since he can’t play the game, he can’t obtain items and sell them for real-life cash. That would be like me suing automakers for not making ramps, lifts, hand controls, and other modifications standard on all models. Not only can I not drive their cars, but I heard there is something called professional racing, where I would be able to drive and make money from it.

The worst thing is that video game companies are slowly but surely making changes. Not as many as we’d all like, and not as quickly either. But they are doing it. It’s a hard task, because every disability is different. In fact, people with the same disability will still have different levels of ability a lot of the time. But these companies are trying. And disabled gamers and interest groups are working with them. And it is people like this who run the risk of setting all this progress back and making companies less likely to help out for fear of getting sued if they don’t do it like we want.

That’s all for this edition.

Inaccessibility is Inexcusable

Hey, guys. You’re in for a treat tonight (I hope). Since I’ve been having trouble thinking up new content to post, I figured I’d dip into my vault and pull out something interesting.

Back in Ithaca, my freshman and sophomore years I belonged to the college publication Buzzsaw, which was known by Buzzsaw Haircut back then. I decided I wanted to write for them and, well, one thing led to another, and I wrote the article I’m about to show you. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and sorry for all the building names. If it’s unclear, leave a comment and I’ll explain what all these buildings are.
—

Imagine me on the day I got my acceptance letter to Ithaca, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and utterly ecstatic. Accepted into the Park School, no less! A school that’s harder to get into than a lot of colleges are. I’m one step closer to the college experience – you know, living in a dorm, spending time with my friends. Oh, and going to class too, of course. I am a journalism major, and hope to eventually become an editorialist, writing scathing essays and articles about what’s happening in the world we live in.

You can only imagine how much more ecstatic I was upon finding out that Ithaca College had an alternative news magazine, Buzzsaw Haircut. The high school from where I come had only one school-sponsored, school-ran newspaper that put out about three issues per year and only covered sports and events that had happened four months prior. When some of the Buzzsaw Haircut staff came to my Intro to Mass Media class one day, I eagerly wrote down the information for the first meeting. This was my chance to go in and get something to write, maybe even make a name for myself.

“7:00 PM, Friends 209, Wednesday.” That was all that was on my mind for the next two days, just counting down the seconds until the meeting. And then it arrived, O glorious day. I got there ten minutes early, went into Textor, accidentally drove right through Friends Hall, turned around, drove through it again (realizing where I was), and looked around for room 209. “It must be upstairs.” I checked for an elevator, and nothing. Just stairs. In Muller? Textor? Phillips? No… just stairs. Using quick thinking, I asked a passerby where the elevator to Friends was.

“There’s an elevator in Job… but I don’t think you can get to Friends from there…” They must be wrong, maybe the next person will know. “Oh, no, you can’t go that way. There’s no entrance.” Her remark was quickly verified by another person. And that’s when I got a phone call from a friend to tell me that, indeed, Friends was inaccessible. Thanks, Buzzsaw. Thanks a lot.

Of course, it’d be wrong to pin all the blame on Buzzsaw. Despite what Ithaca College would have you believe (“Ithaca College strives to ensure that all qualified students with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to access and participate fully in programs and activities”) the campus is severely lacking in what could be called handicapped-friendliness.

For example… let’s take Terraces, in particular, the dining hall building. I live in Emerson, a building which made me think the entire campus might actually be accessible, but boy was I fooled. To get to Terraces, I have to go all the way to Campus Center, up the elevator, all the way up a hill to Whalen (which is just a tad too steep for a rear-heavy motorized wheelchair, might I add), in the elevator, up to the Parking level, across the Baker walkway, and around the Terraces Dining Hall to the handicapped entrance — which until about the third day of classes, was locked. Of course, to get my IDExpress card, I not only had to do all of that, but also cut through the kitchen and take the kitchen elevator: the big scary kind with hulking metal doors and a grated door you slide open too. You know, the kind you typically find in “survival horror” video games. I was just waiting for the undead to burst through the grated door.

I’ve also had to have a class of mine shuffled around repeatedly. It was originally in Dillingham. I love that building. It’s so wonderfully built and really fun to look at. In front of it, pillars of water rise from the majestic fountains. The fountains flanked by sets of stairs. Oh, right, those stairs that make the entire building inaccessible. After numerous jumps of location, from Dillingam to CHS to outside of the Chapel to inside of the Chapel and then all the way back to Smiddy, right between Dillingham and CHS, I can finally have class in a location that is accessible and suitable.

And let’s not forgot the automatic door buttons (the blue square ones) that seem to be conspiring against me. The one outside the elevator to go up to the walkway has not even worked until very recently. The one outside Terraces (you know, the one they had kept locked the first few days of classes) has stopped working very recently. Add this to the one outside Park School’s entrance and probably a number of other ones, and you’ve got a lot of automatic doors that aren’t exactly automatic. I don’t need to tell you this is an inconvenience when late for class and in the pouring rain, which seems to be typical Ithaca weather.

Also not fun is driving into one of the many potholes in the sidewalks and roads and paths around campus. The ones on the ramp up to the Emerson 2nd floor spring readily to mind, much like a spring in and out of my seat as I drive over them. Let’s not forget the wonderfully uneven sidewalks around the Health Center. Of course, I can’t think of a better place to be forcibly thrown from my chair and scrape along the ground because of a bump in the road.

But, of course, I can always forget my troubles and visit my friends in their dorm rooms, right? Yes, what a perfect way to relax. Of course, half of my friends live in quad buildings with no elevators and don’t live on the first floor. Some of my friends do live in the nicely accessible Towers, though if there were to be a fire, I’m pretty much toast.

I decided to go see what else I couldn’t get into on campus besides the majority of residence halls, and the copy center was suggested to me. Now, allegedly, there are two of those. I had no idea where either one was. Upon asking, I learned one was near the office of public safety and the other one was in the Gardens. The person mentioned having to drive all through Gardens and onto a loading dock to get to the one, and I figured, “Well, I’d like to make it home by sundown, so I’ll go to the other one.” Going to this other copy center sent me over poorly constructed curbs, crossing rather busy streets several times, and finally coming to an access road and a sidewalk next to a lake. Of course, the sidewalk ends up stopping before you even get to the buildings and you end up being sent into the street anyway. Am I the only one who finds it odd that to get to the office of public safety you have to travel down a road containing rather wide curves? Once I actually made it to the copy center (after getting out of the way of two somewhat large trucks) the building was surprisingly accessible and easy to maneuver! Good job!

So, I remember thinking that Ithaca said that they had made very accessible buildings. What I was told is that Ithaca has made great progress in accessibility. I guess that means they had none, and now they have very little. Maybe by the time I’m long-graduated and far away, people won’t have to have their classrooms switched around. They won’t have to miss out on poorly planned meetings. They won’t have to take a power-draining trip across the world to get good food. Maybe, but probably not.

To wrap up, I would like to mention that the Ithacan brought it to light in 1999, and it seems like that passage of five years has done a whole lot of good. Buildings called inaccessible back then (Friends and Dillingham, specifically) are still in the same state now. What makes it worse is the fact that they’ve had five whole years to remedy the situation.

So, until there are repairs made and buildings fixed, it looks like I’ll be shuffled around, tossed about, and inconvenienced at every turn, all while shelling out over $35,000 a year.
—

So, there you go. Keep in mind, this was written five years ago. Luckily, things have changed since then. I just wanted to show this because it was one of the first disability-related things I wrote.

News Round-Up

So, today we’re going to read some news. We’re going to read it, and hopefully, you’re going to be angry about it. I already know I’m angry about these news stories. That’s why I picked them. So, let’s get started.

Our first story comes from The Daily Mail, and has also been reported by CNN and various other news outlets.

The BBC children channel, CBeebies, has hired a new presenter/host, Cerrie Burnell. Burnell was born with one arm, and if you look at the picture in the news story, even that arm is most of arm.

This, apparently, is an outrage. Upset parents have written the BBC and flooded parenting websites with complaints, saying this woman is going to scare their children. They are demanding she be removed. These terrible people are saying that she was hired to fill some sort of politically correct employment quota. Never mind that Burnell has a four-month-old daughter, is a teaching assistant at a special needs school, and has won praise for her work in the theatre, she was obviously hired out of the need to show minorities on television.

Heaven forbid a child sees a person who is different. Heaven forbid they see one who is a positive influence, one they can relate to, one who makes them feel good. We all know it would be terrible to teach kids about different people, and instead let them stay sheltered until they blatantly gawk at these strange humanoid creatures on the street!

It’s an utter tragedy that someone has been put on a kids’ show that might require parents to sit down with their kids for once and have a brief conversation about disability.

At least all people aren’t morons. You’re not going to hear me say this often, but… read the comments on that news story. These comments are actually as disgusted by these complainers as I am. And it seems all their kids love Cerrie.

Newsflash. It is rare that disabilities scare other children. This is all anecdotal, but, well, I’m handicapped. I’ve grown up around other handicapped people. All of us in a mainstream public school. There was never a problem. At the worst, what you get is gawking curiosity. Which, yeah, feels weird at times and makes me (at least) feel uncomfortable. But they never seem scared. The only way these kids are going to seem upset is if they see that their parents are. So, complainers to the BBC, you sicken me.

Next up on the list of people that sicken me, The Authors Guild. The Authors Guild pretty much seems to be the RIAA of the publishing world. Why have they made today’s post? It has to do with the Amazon Kindle 2.

I’ll say up front… I’m not a big fan of the Kindle. I’d much rather have a book. But hey, to each their own. One thing the Kindle 2 does, though, is kind of neat. It has a text-to-speech program. So, it reads whatever book you buy in that wonderfully terrible robot voice that all text-to-speech programs use.

The Authors Guild? They have a problem with this. They say that what Kindle 2 is basically doing is offering audiobooks for the price of regular books! Now, anyone with two braincells available to rub together know this is, to be blunt, a load of crap.

Yes, it is an audiobook, in the most literal sense. It is a book, done as audio. But don’t people buy audiobooks for the person reading it, most of the time? Because want to hear the words in the author’s voice, or by whatever celebrity or professional reader they got to do it? And aren’t a lot of audiobooks abridged? And beyond that, aren’t a lot of books simply not made into audiobooks??

You know who this feature would work really well for? Someone who can’t see! How about that, Authors Guild? Or someone who would have trouble operating controls and would just like it to be easier and just be read to?

But no, no. You’re not thinking of that. Or you just don’t care. Instead? You threaten Amazon with copyright law violation (and undoubtedly get publishers to threaten to break ties with Amazon) and get them to leave text-to-speech ability up to writers and publishers on a book-by-book basis.

So, Authors Guild, if you have a book you’re not going to turn into an audiobook, maybe you’ll give them the rights to do it? And if you’re going to do it? What then? All the people who could really use text-to-speech are going to have to drop $30 on a possibly-abridged, read-by-someone-they-might-not-care-about version of an $11 paperback? This is why you’re on the list, Authors Guild.

Aaand finally, the biggest one has been saved for last. I’m not sure who to be the most angry at. I’m pretty sure we might have a tie. Should I be mad at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Or should I just be mad at Jerry Lewis? I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Jerry Lewis was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Why? For his work on Jerry’s Kids. You know, those telethons to benefit muscular dystrophy. But wait, some of you are probably saying… that’s so wonderful of him! How could this be a bad thing?

Because they are a crock and Jerry Lewis is a sham. All Lewis does is get on television and further a stereotype that all people with a disability are pathetic, pitiable subhumans. He doesn’t want people with muscular dystrophy to be empowered. He doesn’t want them to feel good. He wants to have everyone pity them and throw money their way. He wants them to be terrible little novelty God-bless-us-everyone Tiny Tims.

Don’t believe me? How about in 2001? When confronted by disability rights activists for exploiting the disabled and making them out to be nothing more than a group to be pitied, he said the following: “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house!”

This writer has muscular dystrophy, as do a lot of Lewis’ critics. When this one in particular protested in 1993, how’s Lewis respond? “This one kid in Chicago would have passed through this life and never had the opportunity to be acknowledged by anybody, but he found out that by being a dissident he gets picked up in a limo by a television station.”

Let’s go further back. 1992. According to Jerry, his Jerry’s Kids “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do.”

1990? Jerry Lewis said he was glad he wasn’t in a wheelchair, but if he was, he’d “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person.”

That is what the disabled are to Jerry Lewis. Half-people. Helpless. Unknown. Worthless. Cripples. Pitiable. And they gave this man a humanitarian award? For holding back an entire group of people? And for being thanked for it? By making people with muscular dystrophy practically owe him for his so-called charity?

They gave him an award. Absolutely wonderful.

That’s the news. See you next time.