Is this the silliest thing you've ever heard, or what?

Okay, so I was googling to try to help find an answer for someone in another thread, and I came across a link entitled "Second Life Class Action".

Get this. By the sound of it, this guy is trying to organize a bunch of blind people to sue Linden Lab because SL is a visual environment. Wow. Talk about lack of a first life. Come on.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for supporting the rights of the disabled, but this is beyond insane. What's next? Should they sue the Anderson Window Company for not making windows that verbally describe what's going on outside. I mean, really, those windows only work for people who can see, right? That's discrimination, right?

Or how about suing the automobile industry for not making sonar driven cars? Blind people can't drive regular cars. That's discrimination, right?

I know some of you are probably thinking, "Whoa, Chosen, you're being so insensitive to the disabled." 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?

When we're done, let's get all the deaf people together, and sue the music industry for making stuff that only people who can hear can hear. After that, let's find all the people whose noses don't work, and sue all the florists we can find for growing flowers that only people who can smell can smell.

Or, we can maybe just accept the fact that not every person in this world is meant to do every little thing. That might be a little easier.

Thoughts?

I saw that somewhere the other day...strange that it is SL and not internets in general (all of them!) They'd be smarter to go after WoW or somebody with deeper pockets....

The client does have new accessibility features added a few weeks after that blog entry was posted, so it does seems that LL did respond. Big issue being that like the Real World things are nicely tagged for accessibility. There are 4 types of doors in SL, those that open when you click them, those that open automatically, phantom doors that don't open but let you to pass through them and doors that don't open at all; not to mention the 'security' doors that require special interaction. How would you communicate this to a blind person? Is it LL's job to communicate this or the builders? I think LL has decided to make the interface more accessible but like the real world and the internet, leaving it up to the individuals in it to make their sites accessible.

Another solution would be to use LibSL and AI visual processing, this type of visual processing is just beginning to come to fruition (aka cars that can drive themselves); it might be a good development step to deploy it in SL.

Either way you cut it, it's not LL's responsibility to do more then a good faith effort that doesn't put them out of business, or is more then what the rest of the industry has done.

I'm going to move this over to Resident - Run Websites (as otherwise I would be locking this; and in a weird way it does fit there).

This must be the idiot that kept running into last nite when I was trying to photograph my swimsuits. If I would have know he was blind, I would have tried to be more patient!

lmfao!





Yeah, I can`t believe he posted his (rl) picture!

It is the case in the UK at least that there is a legal requirement for "service providers" (including websites) to be accessible to the visually-impaired.
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

Now, I'm not sure that SL counts as a "service" in this context, and of course the person concerned here is a US citizen anyway (and SL is based in the US).

However, making SL more accessible strikes me as something that LL would be keen on doing for its own sake. I don't think launching a class action suit is quite what's needed. And now that the client is open source, the possibility exists for someone to create one that is specifically tailored for this.

I`m at a loss as to how the web can be usable to the visually impaired. As far as reading and navigating is concerned.


Can someone shed some light on that? Voice commands? But it seems pretty impossible for SL, you need to be able to see or why use it

Screen readers, braille keyboards... properly-written pages can be parsed and interpreted by software quite adequately. I imagine it's a fairly slow process, but it's certainly done on a regular basis.

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_sacbackgrnd.hcsp

Hmmm. Well, there are readers and thingumies which can narrate web pages etc - which is why you're supposed to have alt text for your images and such. But it strikes me (and having never, thank god, lost my sight I may be talking out of my bottom) that the only experience a blind person would really be able to enjoy from SL would be the social interaction side. All the other things we do there are done for visual experience - building pretty things, making clothes, dressing up your avatar. If there were a translator, how would "You have just created a plywood cube" enhance a blind person's experience? What does plywood look like and what the hell are you going to do with it now?

So don't yell at me if I'm wrong cos I could well be (often am!) but I would assume the only element visually impaired people could enoy (even with accessibility measures in place) would still be the social angle. And there are many many chat programs that provide that. The difference is, SL was designed specifically as a *visual* chat environment**. Every element of it that differs from, say, MSN, is about the visual experience.

And here we're right back to Chosen's argument - I'm going to sue you because you made paintings which I can't enjoy because I can't see them.

Sometimes I could really dislike people.

**Edited to add that this is all assuming the complaint is about anything other than it not being possible to use a program to 'hear' chat. If someone really expects any of the other elements of SL to be made accessible to the blind then they're a doofus

I think it's a wonderful idea! Picture it - Your child finally gets to see the SL world with the help of their trusted friend, Microsoft Sam, describing everything they see... The trees swaying in the wind, random physical objects flying by, n00bs with Flexi-pe...

- Jolan

While I agree that suing SL for being a mostly visual experience is nuts, I think that we could offer a lot more to blind people in terms of an experience than the suggestions above.

As a mentor, I can imagine being linked to a person who isn't able to move easily alone, and being able to explain where we are going and what we are doing over voice chat.

I have often found that exploration is enhanced by having a companion with you, and I see no reason why that couldn't be a person with a visual impairment as easily as anyone else. In some ways being able to take someone to your favourite sims and explain what you love about them might be a very positive experience for both parties. I have certainly found that I can sometimes see the things I have built with new eyes when I show them to other people.
Cali

I'm going to sue all car company's because I lost my eyesight completely and they won't allow me to drive!

Jk

I don't see that it is silly at all to look for ways in which to expand the SL experience to make it accessible to people who are visually impaired. I may have something of a personal issue here; my father has a condition which causes progressive visual deterioration, and so I tend to look out for related issues (this condition, macular degeneration, will affect lots of you by the way). Either way, I don't think that lawsuits are at all helpful but the basic idea of increased access I think is a very sensible one.

There are many ways in which SL could be used by someone unable to see the screen - a client that could tell you which objects were where, which were touchable and so on. In fact, adding lots of these functions to LSL would be very generally useful, as scripts themselves are effectively blind.

Problem is, so many people don't bother to name their objects. Same with images with no alt tags on the 'net.

"There are 704 objects named 'Object' to your immedate left. There are 283 objects named 'Object' immediately in front of you...." ... etc.

I've done some extensive research on games for the blind, and have talked to some of the forerunners for blind games, the programmer which is blind himself. There are very few games for blind people. Most of their fare is kiddie adventure, board games, card games, and puzzle games. I've been working on a game called Darkworld, which features a blind hero, who uses his powers and hearing to find his way through the game-world. The game features high-contrast menu driven graphics for those who are partially-impaired, and mainly features audible driven menus, cues, and whatnot for everything. It's basically a large-spanning hardcore rpg for blind gamers.

As far as SL goes, SL unfortunately is not a physical public place. You can't force SL to install wheelchair ramps throughout the world. There could be some blind-friendly sims or areas within SL but, to make Sl completely accessible to blind gamers, is something that is pretty much beyond at the moment.

I would say though, there are a few 3D FPS games for blind people. Which use audio cues to help them navigate.

Well, now they're free to read the source code and write their own optimized client.

> You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> There is a penis here
>

Well, no, I don't think it's the silliest thing, especially when one considers the increasing use of Second
Life to host educational activities.

At the very least, I'd like this person to start with a set of guidelines (and yes, I know there are standards, but it would be polite) for SL designers.

I have a friend with extensive red-green colour blindness who has to have his spouse select clothing for him, because to him they're both grey. In your mind, imagine what the existing experience would be like. Now take out another colour, and another, ... It shouldn't take a great deal of imagination to think about how to simulate this in the existing client (a sim where everything is a shade of black and it's always midnight?)

A mapping HUD might be useful in this regard.

It could be done, and probably will need to be done at least for those sims which provide access to otherwise publicly accessible educational services, at least in the US.

> A dwarf runs into the room. He looks angry.
> throw penis at dwarf
> You do not have a penis to throw at the dwarf

The advent of the open browser means that the entire burden of creating a visually accessible environment no longer lies entirely with the sim designer. As interested as I am in something like this, though, I could not afford to work on it, which is where lots of these "wouldn't it be nice" scenarios tend to break down.

Umm..... How did the 'Blind' people know about SL? Did some dastardly 'hard of hearing' person spill the beans?

There's certainly a demand for information systems to help those who are visually impaired but not blind, a category that includes a great many people: they can see the world but it's not always real clear, they could use a system that would let those so inclined add descriptions and tags to parts of the virtual world, so when the poor eyesight user can't tell what something is they can click on it and have the text to speech system read the user added descriptive info to them out loud.

More proof that class action suits are created by lawyers, not people - the person launching the suit hopes to bilk monies out of Linden Labs by way of a settlement for his frivolous lawsuit. I'm astonished that somebody thought this was a good idea - no, strike that - I'm not surprised at all. There is a ladder of evolution, and somebody has to be at that bottom rung...

Apparently none of you (including the original poster) read the linked article in question. At no point does the author propose to file an actual, real-world class action suit. He merely proposes "the equivalent of a class action inside SL". His description really amounts to a petition for additional features (he should simply be directed to the voting section). He reiterates this numerous times in his responses to similar knee-jerk commentary. His article also predates the open-source announcement. Joshua Linden actually replied to his article and pointed this out as well as indicating the accessibility features that already exist.

Please look before leaping into a rant.

Actually, I did read the article. Maybe you should look before you leap as well.

The author did not make it absolutely clear one way or another whether he was talking about a RL suit or not. His exact wording for his proposal was "the equivalent of a class action inside SL". That could be interpreted as you said, or it could also be interpreted the way I and numerous others saw it, as a request for SL users to join his class. The words "inside SL" could easily have been a reference to the people in SL, not the environment itself.

Had he really been talking about just gathering a group of people together inworld, he should have used the word "protest" or "rally" or something to that effect, not "class action". A class action only has one definition, and that's a law suit.

Further, if his intent were to gather the blind around him, as the article clearly implied, obviously there's no way to do that inworld (which was of course the reason for his article in the first place). No one can join a class action who's not a member of the complaining class, so in this case, you've got to be blind to be a plaintiff. Clearly blind people can't do anything in the SL world, so logic dictates they have to join him in RL. Therefore, the very presence of the words "class action" absolutely imply he's talking about a RL lawsuit.

If he did clarify in the follow-up comments, as you say, I didn't see it. I didn't read all the comments, nor do I think I should have had to. Any article worth its salt should explain clearly and concisely what it means directly within its own content. It shouldn't need follow-up explanations. When an author has to come back and say "what I said was ____ but what I meant was _______", it's a sign that he shouldn't be writing articles.

I stand by my original comment. That article is indeed one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, on a great many levels.

...sigh... I really don't see how "the equivalent of a class action inside SL" could be interpreted as a RL class action suit without the reader making a major leap in illogic. The grammer is pretty clear. As a guy who edits for a living, I just don't see the connection.

For the record, I think demanding that a private software company develop features for an unintended audience is asinine and the author deserves to be ridiculed for that boneheaded proposition. But I am just... not... seeing... this lawsuit you claim he's filing.