FCC / CVAA discussion

Billy discussed an example above

I'm not, it was just a word in a sentence and I explained what that sentence meant. "Mechanic" is not a term or concept that is defined or referenced in CVAA.

 

Ok, sure, please use that example to answer my question then.

It is, however, a term that you've used in answers both here and where you've been formally interviewed as a consultant on the matter. Details matter. Replacing a word you won't define with a vague assurance that they won't "break your game" is not a practically useful explanation, because I can't use that when making design or implementation decisions.

It's frustrating and, for what it's worth, really doesn't help get anyone on board with this whole thing.

Honestly, right now I'm really glad that my current projects don't involve built-in communication systems, because it means I won't be among the first to run into this stuff in production.

 

It's covered in the answer to Billy; if you're making a case based on "reasonable" you cover what work would be required, what impact that would have on the company or product, financial or otherwise (being incompatible with how your game works would fit in here), what the nature of your company is and what other equivalent accessible products you have (doesn't really apply to games).

You then discuss this with the FCC. This can happen at one of two points:

1. send it in whenever you want, for early confirmation.
2. just keep it on file, to be reviewed if a customer raises an issue.

I've been racking my brains trying to think of when else I might have said 'mechanic'. Perhaps in relation to pre-defined quick chat Vs free text in FPS Vs MMO as an illustration of different approaches being appropriate for different games.

Honestly don't get hung up over it, 'mechanic' is not a word or concept that exists in CVAA.

This is a really valid point; at the start it will be messy, then it will get easier. What won't happen is details of the remediation process being uncovered (it is private, between the customer and company). However the more time goes on the more examples of implementation will be available to learn from, there are games coming over the coming few months that will give clear examples to learn from.

 

Edit: just to clarify, I meant offended at the possibility of, for example, not being able to play as ones choice of gender, which might be considered an accessibility issue.

My point is that there is no clear conceptual barrier to define the point where this type of law would become (according to some logical standard) an unacceptable intrusion into freedom to do whatever you please with your own work. Because unlike the examples you gave, it is not a regulation of what should be out of a game, but what should be in it.

But anyway, I understand you're not keen to debate the validity of it.

I can only hope that the first few games to run this gauntlet really put it to the test, because the law and whole process of compliance seem to have been conceived in some kind of naiive legal utopia where everyone can't get enough of proving their innocence.

 

The reason why that isn't a possibility is that disability and accessibility (despite the occasional misuse of the word accessibility in gamedev) are rigidly defined terms, not just at government level but internationally.

Nearly every country in the world has ratified the UN convention on the rights of people with disabilities, which defines accessibility as relating to people with disabilities, and defines people with disabilities as:

"Those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others"

So unless the governments of 180 or so countries agree to rewriting that, being offended by not being able to play as your gender cannot be viewed as accessibility; if someone claims it is, they are factually incorrect.

Hence why terms like accessible hotel room, accessible website, accessible entrance etc all have and have had the same meaning, which doesn't relate to gender representation.

 

The word "mechanic" is less of an issue than a lack of specificity in a discussion where specificity matters.

I asked how we would "successfully argue the point to thus be compliant". What language would the FCC, auditor, etc. be able to understand? What level of evidence is enough to support our claims? What kind of claim is "reasonable" in the first place?

For instance, would it be reasonable for me to argue that having a text-based comms system during matches in a fast-paced VR squad game is detrimental? Voice comms are a core part of the play of that game. Having to use a text display is going to be detrimental to the gameplay experience - it will distract people from looking at what they're doing to read it, and typing into it would hugely interfere with their controls. Would that be a reasonable justification to not meet those requirements, which were clearly meant for the telecommunications and similar industries? What if it wasn't a VR game?

I know you can't give authoritative answers, but - since you offered to answer questions - I'm interested to know what you'd do in that position.

I feel it's really worth noting two things about the community of people you're interacting with here:
- We are often highly detail oriented, because we have to be. When we get information our next step is to figure out how it can be applied to our day to day work in designing and building software. "Nuts and bolts", "brass tacks" type stuff. When we undertake large bodies of work we want to first be reasonably confident of the results we'll get - "If I do X, I am reasonably confident I'll get Y result".
- We actively look for "edge cases", because while they're comparatively rare they're the things that will break our stuff. Games seem to be a glaring set of edge cases here, so it's a high risk area for us - and even you've said "it will be messy". I suspect that the vast majority of this discussion is hinging around edge cases, as typical cases seem straightforward to me, at least at a glance.

It's very much my job to get "hung up over" these things.

If I were doing projects where this stuff mattered I'd be getting in contact with people in other industries who have handled it.

It's a shame that in all the duration of the waivers nothing was done to avoid that messiness. (To clarify, I am not saying you should have done it personally.)

Maybe that's something you could advocate for: some clear guidelines, backed by the FCC, which give game developers in particular clear direction in navigating the edge cases? What's definitely "reasonable", what's definitely not "reasonable", and where they should seek guidance from the FCC.

I suspect that to get developers on board with this in a positive fashion (that seems to be what you want) then getting as much clarity as possible is a good start.

 

"reasonable" is a balance of four factors, each weighed equally and assessed on a case by case basis:

- The nature of the work required
- The impact that the work would have on your company and/or your product
- What type of company you are
- How accessible your equivalent products are (not really relevant to games)

I wouldn't think that would be reasonable. CVAA doesn't require text-based comms systems, in fact whether or not you have text chat has no bearing at all on how accessible your voice chat is regarded as being. CVAA requires voice chat to be usable by people who are deaf, in as equivalent way as is achievable. Hence all the talk of text to speech etc.

As far as how text entry might work in a fast paced game, a good example to look at might be Rocket League; it has free text chat that is used frequently between matches, and predefined text chat that is used during matches. There's some discussion of that in this deaf gamer panel, you can see there the discussion of free text chat in an MMO Vs predefined quick chat in an FPS, from around 9:30 onwards:

So for what I would do in a situation where I wasn't immediately sure.. in the first instance speak with deaf gamers, and make sure I did it as early as possible before I got to technically and psychologically invested in a particular approach. After that, if I was still uncertain, draft an evaluation and send it to the FCC for confirmation.

I was a designer for a pretty long time myself.

There are plenty of people in this industry who have been handling it too. There hasn't been much public discussion from them due to NDA+lawyers, but over the next few months you'll see lots of relevant stuff hitting.

The FCC explicitly don't do stuff like that. But I have been talking to them plenty, and what I've learned is going into guidance that I'm writing. It won't give specific guidance on what the thresholds are on edge cases though as there aren't any, there isn't a formula can apply, it is assessed on a case by case basis.

Honestly that's not it. A really great deal of misinformation has been spread, which is harmful for devs and gamers alike, so I've been firefighting, doing my best to correct that within the best of my abilities (here, reddit, youtube, twitter, comments sections, other forums). Outside of that firefighting I don't have the mental capacity to be thinking about whether people are on board or not. All I'm aiming for is people to not be forming opinions and making decision based on incorrect info.

 

So in other words, there is no clear standard at all (despite the fact that there is a penalty involved), and I would have to hope the person I'm speaking with has some ability to understand where I'm coming from.

If trying to explain to your studio boss that something is too difficult is bad enough, imagine trying to convince a bureaucrat whose job depends not at all on your product being finished and performing well.

Sorry but no, I want to see the legal manual first. Then, when I have some idea of the legal boundaries, I can talk with deaf gamers in regards to making things work as best as possible.

It's not about being 'psychologically invested', it's about having an interesting idea that you want to spend your time and money developing.

The FCC explicitly 'don't do' clear guidelines? What sort of approach is that?

I respectfully disagree. You are trying to combat misinformation without putting anything in its place, which is unsurprisingly very difficult to do.

The message I have gotten from the information you've provided, is that the FCC have charged me by default to comply with a very intrusive law that does not have clear guidelines, where I would have to defend myself on a 'case by case basis' without any real idea of when the FCC might be in the wrong, speaking with people who may or may not have any experience with game development and who have no way of being corrected by the definition of the law when they take a wrong step.

Is this really the sort of world we live in now? Frankly, as it stands, I hope this 'law' - if one can even justify calling it that - is completely ignored.

 

Sticking to factual replies:

Here's the legal manual:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-11-151A1.pdf

The FCC are the sole arbiters, the call is made by them. You may not like that, but it's how it is, disliking it doesn't change anything. Uncertainty is not required however, you can submit your analysis to FCC for feedback/approval any time you want.

What that sentence meant was that FCC do not give official endorsements to third party guidance. They do provide their own though, for example:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-12-418A1.pdf
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-341628A1.pdf
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/advanced-communications-access-individuals-disabilities

I can confirm that the law is not being ignored. I can confirm that it has had a profound impact on the industry, with many companies taking compliance very seriously indeed, and not only that but many companies are also working on non-CVAA accessibility considerations that would never have been a topic of conversation had CVAA not raised the profile of accessibility in management circles, voluntarily improving access in games that have no comms functionality.

 

Re-quoting the rules doesn't answer questions about their application or interpretation.

Interpretation is particularly important, for reasons explained here:

I must be misunderstanding something here, this seems like a contradiction to me. It is unreasonable for me to exclude text functionality, even though text functionality has no bearing on this?

Putting aside that there's always some level of misinformation online, I suspect that it's particularly bad in this case because the base information is unclear. It's difficult for us to see exactly how this will apply to our work, so some people are making worst-case assumptions, and attempts so far to clarify things aren't really working out.

I hope it's not ignored, but clarified as to how it's interpreted and applied in our industry. It's a classic example of a well intentioned law not keeping up with technology.

 

I suggested that you advocate for clear guidelines, not that you write them yourself...

 

I hope this law is ignored, not the consideration of accessibility itself. And I think it's worth considering that if nothing else except the law works to get people to do something for you, it's probably because too much is being asked.

As I see it at the moment, I'm not completely against the idea of having some kind of regulation of accessibility for big, popular games that very many people use. Although I am against regulation of creative expression, and against any law that aims to force someone to work to provide for someone else, I can see that there is a point where, as they say, power comes with responsibility. But that is very, very far from where indies are.

Anyway, I know that you are not the FCC, and so I hope that in the interests of getting this law to produce good, efficient results for disabled gamers, you'll do what you can to produce a bit of clarity for developers.

 

That lexology quote is spot on. It is decided on a case by case basis, without a fixed criteria to work to. You may not like that, but that's how it is. The mechanism for avoiding uncertainty is to send it in early.

Yes, misunderstanding.

If you provide voice chat, that voice chat must be accessible. If you need provide text chat, that text chat must be accessible. If you provide voice and text, the voice must be accessible and the text must be accessible.

It is bad in this case due to two things; dualshockers running with a misleading headline, which they fixed, and oneangrygamer running with a misleading headline and article, which rather than fix they doubled down on.. against the background misinformation spread quickly.

This entire message board thread itself only exists due to OAG. Scroll up and check out the very first message in the thread.

 

It hasn't been ignored, keep a close eye on releases over the coming months

That's what I'm aiming for

 

I know it's spot on. That's why I used it to describe the problem. You don't seem to even acknowledge that it's a problem.

Well, thanks for trying, I guess? Clearly nothing I'm saying has been absorbed. You haven't explained where my misunderstanding is, and just responded with yet more vague language - "Be accessible" - when what it means to "be accessible" is the very thing being discussed in the first place!

Can you define "accessible" in the context of voice chat for a fast-paced, squad-based, realistic modern day shooter played in VR?

Please take this constructively, as I intend it: That's not at all what I'm seeing. There are no specifics, vague terms are being used without being defined, and questions are being given non-answers.

Furthermore, this kind of statement...

...causes friction which really isn't needed.

 

@ianhamilton_


Since you kindly offered I have a few questions.


If I add VOIP chat to a non-competetive VR game what are my responsibilities? I assume adding text input chat? What if Im trying to avoid text based input in VR altogether? Tough luck for me? Do you think that is a reasonable request to make? Adding this is a lot more work in VR than just adding some contrast to a few UI elements.

As an accessibility specialist, what do you say I should do?



To the question 'Will this force all developers to ensure that all disabilities are catered to? Will failing to do so leave them open to complaints?'
you answered:

'There’s a specific set; blind, deaf, HoH no speech, no color perception, limited dexterity, limited reach & strength, limited learning/memory/language, prosthesis, low vision, and hearing loss. There are a couple of extras that are specific to UI and info – avoiding common epilepsy triggers and allowing moving text to be viewed in a static format.

Developers are free to choose whichever implementation works for their own product, but it must be considered from early in development and tested with people with disabilities, with records kept of both things.'


But I also read that the criteria must be met 'within reasonable cost and effort'. I consider the sentence above in bold outside of 'reasonable cost and effort' for many one person (or similarly small) teams. Finding people with disablities (which is not the time consuming part) and keeping records (any additional correspondence with the FCC, and/or official records that could be used in court; which is the time consuming part) adds significant overhead. Who decides what reasonable is? The team? The FCC?
(Its the FCC, right?.
So at this point either invest significant amount of your resources to create a compliant CHAT SYSTEM (ffs, just wanted to make a game with a simple chat at the beginning...) or do nothing but risk getting complaints sent to the FCC)


As an example; I can add realtime chat using services like photon or pub-nub plus some UI from the asset store for <$35 in less than a day. Now If I want to fully comply for the sake of mental peace, I estimate that researching the requierements to provide accessibility for all above mentioned disabilities + implementing them + getting all the neccessary graphical assets and related resources to be at least another day. If not more. And this is excluding finding a person/people with said disabilities and testing all is ok. In which case you will have to go through a full design process and keep documentation for it.

In this case my questios is; Is 100% or more of the amount of time the chat itself takes to implement a reasonable thing to expect?

Can you give some examples of what 'within reasonable cost and effort' means for solo developers and small studios from your experience? If I can add a feature in a day, does spending a week to make it CVAA compliant seem reasonable?


From here I see two possible routes:
Either small teams don't really have to care about this since anything can be considered outside of 'reasonable cost and effort'
or
It puts a squeeze on small teams when it comes to multiplayer games and raises the entry requirements, if it ends up being enforced strictly.

 

I'm not here to talk about what is and isn't a good idea; just to clarify facts

See the reply further back that mentioned Rocket League

That sentence was referring to a document which you haven't seen. I don't want to get your expectations up though, there will be things in it that still aren't covered, as some of the things you want strict definitions on are not strictly defined and instead decided on a case by case basis.

It is intended as statement of fact rather than friction; the point being that the time for those kind of discussions was the time period leading up to 2010. That horse bolted many years ago. There isn't anything to be gained by talking about whether it's a good idea or not, it is what it is.

 

Nor am I. In fact, this is a great example of words sometimes needing definitions for clarity. I'm using "problem" in the engineering or design context: a situation I want to change - in this case, my lack of understanding of how to deal with this new legislation. It was not a judgement of the legislation, it's the first step of getting from facts to actions.

Are we talking about the same Rocket League? The one I'm familiar with is not a "realistic modern day shooter played in VR". Like I said, specifics matter, and I picked that specific example because it highlights parts of the issue. Dodging that helps nobody.

My point was that if you genuinely want to help people reach clear solutions then your approach will have to be vastly different to the one I'm seeing here.

Anyway... it's pretty clear to me that this discussion won't solve my problem.

 

What if there is, at the same time, a video-challenged and an audio-challenged person in the game? TTS is easy but I've never seen STT work. So one of these will not be able to communicate with the other and that will be my fault under this law?

 

It's not just that edge case that applies; for a deaf person to be able to take part in a voice chat system they need to be able to convert between text and voice in both ways.

You probably have seen STT working, for example Siri or Alexa. It is mega expensive tech to develop, so implementing it in games likely will mean using an existing cloud service rather than developing it yourself. That means latency on the deaf gamers' part, but that's unavoidable, and chat with some mis-translations and latency is betting than having no ability to communicate at all.

For examples in games, see Halo Wars 2 or Forza Horizon 4. They both use the Xbox text <-> speech API, which is an entirely free service for anyone using the Xbox SDK for PC or windows.

 

The comment was in reference to how to reduce uncertainty over "reasonable" - I've answered that previously

Please go back and read the answer that mentions Rocket League, the answer isn't what you think it is. The answer was specifically about a realistic modern day shooter played in VR.

I'm not here to help people reach solutions, I'm here to make sure that the lies spread by the oneangrygamer article cited in the first post of this thread go no further; that when developers start looking into solutions they aren't doing so off the back of wildly inaccurate information.

 

You absolutely haven't. All your responses are pretty much a variation of 'it depends'. Even in cases where the questions seem they could be answerable in a straigthforward way.

I previousy asked you about what constitutes 'reasonable' from your experience. Ideally providing some examples if possible.
Because for me personally, these:
- The nature of the work required
- The impact that the work would have on your company and/or your product
- What type of company you are
- How accessible your equivalent products are (not really relevant to games)
could in practice become to be interpreted as meaning that the requirements set by the CVAA are not feasible for small teams.

But you seem to have completely ignored me. Glad to be communicating with you.

 

Text chat is a separate communication service, whether you have text chat doesn't affect whether or not voice chat is accessible. Adding text chat wouldn't allow deaf people to communicate with people who are by necessity using voice chat. Adding text chat would also be of no use if text chat is not practically usable in the context of how your gameplay works.

What CVAA requires is a way for people who can't hear and speak to be able to use voice chat. Step one of that is allowing them access to the voice messages, which means using a third party speech to text service. Step two is allowing them a means of sending voice messages. This may vary between games. In some, freely typing out messages during gameplay might be doable and desirable. In others it might not be; free typing still available but usually only used in lobbies, and with chat wheel type functionality covering configurable predefined phrases to allow people to communicate when free text entry isn't feasible.

As I previously mentioned Rocket League is a nice example of multimodal communication; play a few games of that and you'll see people using text chat in lobbies and then falling back to the pre-defined phrases during gameplay.

Correct. If text input is required to provide equivalent communication and is wouldn't break your game or incur unreasonable expense, you don't have the option of excluding it on a matter of preference or principle.

"as far as is achievable ... within reasonable effort / expense" refers to the features themselves, not to record keeping. Even if you assessed what work was needed and decided none of it was feasible, you still have to write down that you came to that conclusion and why.

As you say the finding people bit isn't hard, but honestly nor should record keeping be. There are no "official records that could be used in court", courts are not involved with CVAA in any capacity. It's literally just keeping a record of what has been done, for your own benefit... if someone raises an issue and CVAA ask what efforts you make, replying with "huh?" isn't going to look good.

There's also the certification requirement, every year you must certify with the FCC that you are complying with the record keeping obligations. Certification involves logging into the FCC website, checking that your contact details are up to date, ticking the box to say you're complying with the record keeping obligations, and hitting the OK button.

Though it's a relatively small amount of time and money, it is still time and money. Personally I would have preferred to see a blanket exemption for small companies that would have removed that time and money altogether. But that isn't how it works unfortunately.

The team makes the assessment, the FCC reviews that assessment either when an issue is raised or when a company decided to send it over early.

..or send the assessment over early so you can get confirmation before embarking on the work.

I don't want to say for 100% on this, but I wouldn't have thought that the amount of time taken for compliant Vs non-complaint chat system would be relevant at all. If it was, a bug publisher could just say 'would take us twice as long, so we're not doing it". What is relevant is how much it costs Vs what resources the company has, what the revenue from the game is expected to be, that kind of thing. A big publisher has lots of money so realistically cannot say it would cost to much.

I don't have any examples to give. It is decided on a case by case basis as a balance of the amount of work needed for that particular game and what the technical and financial impact of doing the work would be on that particular game and that particular company. The same feature may be feasible for one small company but not another. Previous cases are not public, all details are private between the FCC and the company.

Route 3: as time goes on more examples of implemenations hit the market (essentially the AAAs bearing the R&D cost, that others can then just copy), developers in general as a result getting a better feel for what involved in compliance, making their own work less of an unknown risk, and allowing people to see opportunities for where engines or third party tools could take the strain. All of which bringing the barrier to entry back down again.

Unity certainly could be doing some of the work, people have been asking them for text to speech for UI for example for getting on for a decade. Maybe some weight of numbers of developers saying it's a priority for them is what's needed.

You mentioned elsewhere just wanting to add simple chat; chat isn't simple, that's the long and short of it.

But this time next year it will be simpler than it is today.

 

The answer I was referring to was the option of sending in your assessment early, to get confirmation on your specific case before you do the work rather than after. That's the mechanism available for reducing uncertainty

I answered your question, see above. I wasn't ignoring you, I was literally busy in the middle of writing out answers to all of your questions.

I don't have to be here. Believe me, there are MANY things I would rather be doing. I'm giving up frankly vast amounts of my time to offer my help here, and across reddit, youtube, twitter, facebook, forums, article comments sections. It was my birthday yesterday, I spent it combatting misinformation. I've got no actual client work done for now over a week - I don't work for a company on a salary, I'm self employed, so that means a week of not getting paid (and GDC costs to try to find money for too). I'm literally putting myself out of pocket to help, and to be frank I don't appreciate that tone. I'm not asking for thanks or for gratitude, but at least a bit of decency would be nice.

 

The previous post does help. Thanks.

It really is. Well not anymore. Obviously no need to discuss this though.

 

So FCC makes the final decision. Why not just answer with "yes", then?

 

Because "yes" could be mistaken as meaning "the FCC do the initial assessment"

 

Yep that was exactly my point, that it is not simple any more

 

Its been 30 years since the ADA was enacted, there are still businesses in the states which are legally olbligated to comply, yet have not. I'm not sure why you care so much. If it even is law, chances are it isn't going to affect you.

 

I work as an architectural designer and the ADA was very important for building access.
People NEED to access commercial buildings to conduct business.

ADA does not apply to residences. You can design a home with 10 steps at the front door and wrong type door handle.
So the ADA has exceptions, even though disabled people still NEED to live in houses.

People dont NEED to play indie games made by 1-5 people.

I totally agree, at some point I expect someone to complain about an indie game and the FCC will drop a house on them.
Hopefully a law suit against the FCC after that day will force them to be more reasonable.

The only game devs they have spent time talking to are those with real budgets.
If there are fines, I would expect them to be bigger than the profits of the indie game.

Thanks for posting here Ian, I appreciate it

 

There is no mechanism for this to happen, it works in a very different way to ADA. Complaints cannot be issued until after a mediation process, during which achievability is discussed, and what achievability explicitly means is that CVAA does not require anything that's outside of reasonable effort and expense.

Glad to help! I'll be posting here again sometime over the next couple of weeks with an in depth guide.

 

The main problem is that a dev is then relying upon a government agency to see things their way.
But they dont need to. So it seems to me that mediation means that the FCC informs people how they have stepped out of bounds and need to fix it. The devs decide they dont want to spend any more time working on the project. Problems begin.

It sounds reasonable, that sentence you wrote. But when the two sides disagree, the FCC will win. Whatever that means.

Looking forward to seeing the guide.



[ net neutrality also seemed reasonable ]

 

"Seemed"?

I think we may have different definitions of reasonable.

 

This is the problem. If there is no definition of the law, from where do the FCC draw their conclusions? How can they be corrected if they make a mistake? And how exactly does one take the FCC to task for being wrong?

It's entirely possible that the FCC will be reasonable, but that's beside the point.

 

Actually, I think that this might be a thing already covered by general law? There's this concept of "The Reasonable Man" which I believe is meant to be applied.

On one hand, the average person isn't a software or game developer and has no basis for deciding what is or isn't reasonable. (Certainly since experienced developers still tend to underestimate things I sure as heck wouldn't trust an average person to make a call on it...) On the other hand, the same is true of developing telecommunications technology and all sorts of other stuff which this stuff has already applied to for years, so it could be that there's already precedent for how that's handled.

 

I can see how that could be applied to behavior, but it's harder to see how it could be applied to the ability of a non-standard business to implement some non-standard technical thing.

 

From my non-lawyer's perspective, I think what it means is that you could argue that something isn't "reasonable" if you could demonstrate that an "average" person wouldn't behave in accordance with whatever was being demanded.

How the heck you put that to an objective test, however... ugh.

 

In fact, normally I would think that it means that the accuser would need to demonstrate that an "average" person would behave in accordance with their demands to successfully argue that your actions weren't "reasonable" in the first place. "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that.

 

I meant it seemed reasonable before the changes that killed it, so past tense reasonable.
The FCC thought they were being reasonable when they killed it, so I wouldn't expect a fair mediation from them.

 

Seems like society has gotten too progressive for such outdated concepts

Not surprising that such an aggressive approach hides the definition of the law in such niceties as 'we don't want to micromanage you'.

 

Do we have any evidence of that? I've seen only a bunch of speculative internet paranoia and one person in this thread.

 

Of what exactly? That they don't want to micromanage things? It's mentioned somewhere in the video of the FCC talk, which probably would have been a better thing for the OP to link.

I recommend listening to the whole video, if only to get a perspective on how little understanding the FCC seems likely to have of the theoretical point where games and communications services overlap.

 

Sorry, that was particularly unclear of me! I meant of this being something aggressive hidden behind niceties.

 

I don't think there needs to be an agenda for the approach to be clearly aggressive. And bureaucracies that have the ability to influence such foundational parts of societal function as communication should be viewed very critically by default, in my opinion, for one thing because you can be sure that they have an attraction for the kind of people who like regulating things at an intrusive level. Nor is difficulty of their responsibility an excuse for lack of clarity - quite the contrary.

Despite any difference of perspective that we all have, I think the important question is a very simple one - how does one successfully argue the point when the FCC are wrong, when the definition of the law doesn't seem to really exist? I hope everyone agrees that in principle, they can be wrong.

 

Right of appeal - don't know.

Aggressive approach, viewed critically etc - The purpose of accessibility legislation is for a government to protect the rights of its citizens; specifically of people who are trampled all over without legislative protection. If you view that as government overreach then of course that's your prerogative, but ultimately it is what it is. Communications accessibility legislation isn't anything new; it was signed in in 1990 by broad bi-partisan agreement as part of the ADA. CVAA was an update, to reflect that communication in 2010 was no longer just about telephones (and that watching broadcast TV was no longer just about airwaves). CVAA actually removes the potential for legal aggression that prior legislation had, through the removal of the court process from the equation. Unlike other legislation like ADA it is not possible to bring a CVAA lawsuit, the concept does not exist, putting an end to aggressive rent-seeking cases.

Theoretical overlap between games and comms - the legislation doesn't refer to any kind of overlap, it rigidly defines what an advanced communication service is, and things that fit those definitions appear within games.So rather than theories or overlap, it's about the factual truth that functionality that meets the legal definition of an advanced communication service appears in games. Games are not even mentioned in CVAA. All CVAA cares about is that if you're providing electronic messaging or VoIP or videoconferencing that it must be as accessible as reasonably possible.

 

It is getting there! There are a dozen or so people of varying degrees of CVAA knowledge feeding back on the doc, I'm on holiday this week while feedback comes in, then I'll be able to get the feedback integrated over the weekend and start of next week... after that it takes a few days for the cogs of gamasutra's publishing mechanism to turn, so it should be online by end of next week.

 

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm not particularly against, say, a law where every multiplayer chat must have text, voice, text to speech and speech to text. Such a law is clear and understandable, and solutions, while complex, can be easily standardized.

What bothers me is the lack of the kind of clarity that could be used to standardize solutions, and the way small time devs are held accountable to prove that they have met some bureaucrats idea of what's enough (whatever that is) and what's reasonable.

Anyway I hope my point is clear enough..I can certainly put up with a small intrusion of crystal clear rules that make people's lives better, but not some kind of open ended bureaucratic threat.

All the best with your work and I hope this all ends up being a useful thing for disabled gamers and the industry in general.

 

In the context of games there actually is not a massive amount of wiggle room, in most circumstances it is going to mean a pretty standardised featureset... TTS, STT, size, contrast, remapping, passing Harding test for seizure risk, not relying on colour difference alone to differentiate/communicate, etc.

And thanks! Not gonna lie, the start of the year has been a pain (largely down to that one pack of lies OAG article linked to in the first post of this thread). It'll be nice to be able get back to some normal 9-5 dayjob work after the guide article is done.

But hopefully I can at least help to clarify a few things and help people get the info they need to come to informed conclusions and decisions.

 

Here's the post I mentioned:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20190123/334910/Demystifying_CVAA.php

 

Thats what I was looking for.

In an effort to keep things positive I'll just say:
I think this is the dawn of a new golden age of single player gaming.


Thanks, I feel demystified.