Blind leading the blind
I was somewhat surprised to find a posting from Chosen Few in the “resident-run websites” SL forum, talking about his surprise at finding a Second Life Class Action from people with visual impairments.
Initially, I agreed with Chosen, and I particularly liked his self-deprecating comment: “Well, I’ll tell you what then. I happen to have a disability myself, ADD, which among other things makes it difficult for me to read as quickly as most other people. Would anyone else similarly afflicted care to join me in a class action suit against the Association of American Publishers for their failure to print books that jump up and slap us across the face when our minds start to wander from our reading?”
On second thoughts, though, I began to wonder if it wasn’t possible to open up second life a lot more to visually-impaired people. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that suing Linden Lab because it is a mostly visual environment is akin to deaf people suing musicians for making stuff they can’t hear. We have to accept that we can’t all do everything, and I have said goodbye to the idea that I may lead the corps de ballet at Sadler’s Wells, along with many other cherished ambitions.
On the other hand, you have to remember that visually impaired doesn’t mean blind, for the most part. Many people who are classified as visually impaired may have a serious problem with only part of their vision, and each person is different. What is more, SL should in theory offer many more opportunities than the real world, for exploring and having things described, because … well let’s face it, you aren’t going to accidentally fall off the kerb and into the path of a juggernaut, and everything in SL is already there and described by a computer program.
I am passionately fond of SL, and that has two strong strands: creativity and community. It may not be possible to share the creativity, but the community? I remember buying a holding hand animation attachment somewhere. It didn’t work marvellously well, but a variation which allowed an avatar to put his hand on my shoulder and follow where I go? Would that be too hard?
In combination with skype chat or another voice link, it would be possible for me to accompany someone and “show” them SL. If automated terrain readers were produced, it might be possible to for an attachment to be a guide HUD and provide similar information, although I fear it might end up repeating “you have fallen under the water and cannot get up” rather often in some places.
In a world where anything you want to create is possible, I think we should be looking to include people, not to exclude them. Maybe the open sourcing of the client code will leave the way open for that to happen some time soon.
January 8th, 2007 • 
Caliandris Pendragon • 
comment | January 10, 2007 at 09:39 | individual comment-link
Interesting piece, Caliandris. I’m curious, in Everquest you can type /follow CHARACTERNAME — is there an equivalent of this function in Second Life? What this allows you to do is go on autopilot to follow somebody across the equivalent of a sim (they call them regions) without having to press any buttons. Quite useful when navigating through tricky areas.
One frustration that even more experienced SL residents without any sight impairment have sometimes is getting around with boundaries in the sky on propreties.
In this case visually impaired people could have an NPC character maybe that they could always be following. They could use voice or text commands to the NPC and could have the commands echoed back to them. Text-To-Speech could also be employed for messages across genearal chat areas and different pitch voices could be used for private messages versus standard chat and shouting.
With all this said, I’ve seen some incredible things from people with disabilities (check out this teen who “sees” with his ears and nose, and he can play video games too) and think that any sort of class action lawsuit would be unnecessary.
comment | January 10, 2007 at 10:28 | individual comment-link
As sometimes happens with something like this, my thoughts crystallised while I wrote about the subject. By the time I posted on the original website at http://www.it-analysis.com/blogs/Abrahams_Accessibility/2006/11/second_life_class_action.html?mode=full&hilite=13310#CM13310
I had realised that it was this disempowerment issue that I found disturbing. It’s their world as well as our world, if we choose to take hold of it.
Your idea of an NPC is a good one - at the very least that could be like a bus that takes people from orientation once they have identified themselves as needing it, on a tour of places which had been mapped out.
I’ve always found people in SL to be amazingly generous and helpful to others. It would surprised me very much if people didn’t get together to provide ways around the challenges for the visually impaired resident or tourist.