Is Progress Making Your Life Less Accessible?

 

Could Progress Make Your Life Less Accessible?

Americans tend to be an optimistic people, especially about the power of technology to bring positive change. 59%  of people surveyed in 2014 believed that technology is a force for progress and positive change. I’m not sure if anyone they asked had disabilities, but as a PWD myself, I might have gone along with the sentiment until recently, but I’ve noticed that a lot of the one-touch technology meant for smartphone users on the go has made a lot of things harder for me, including using the phone itself. 

There is no point debating life without a landline if your fingers can barely dial without buttons, as I found out recently. For now, it was easy enough to bring the handset back so I was able to continue my volunteerism uninterrupted, but what happens in a few years? While we all have to live with some uncertainty, I’d hate to see progress put up more roadblocks for people who already face a lot of systemic barriers.

For gamer Grant Stoner, who runs the “Gamer For Granted” blog about access to video games, a glimpse of that future is already here. In an e-mail interview, Stoner describes previous Pokemon games as “easy to play,” adding that he could play some of them with one finger, but in the interest of “innovating a 20-year-old franchise” the latest game involves a controller set-up that even able-bodied people find needlessly complicated, and that Stoner himself can’t use due to lack of mobility.

Access had been improving in the video game world recently, but, he says “developers often incorrectly assume adding accessibility features will slow down production and affect the release date,”making it  harder for games to enter a crowded marketplace, but Stoner believes greater access would open up a wider market.

People with orthopedic disabilities aren’t the only ones that need to fear the encroachment of some innovations.  Writer and editor Chris Kuell, who is blind, has  faced that frustration close to home. 

Raised buttons and knobs are easier for him to use, but to find a stove with one, he “had to hunt.”

“When I’m cooking,” he added, via e-mail from his home in Connecticut, “everything goes in at 350(he has a sticker on that temperature with raised dots so he can find it) and Alexa is my timer.”

While it’s true that people with disabilities are a comparatively small market(and sometimes, a modification that opens a door for one puts up a roadblock for someone else,) my hope for the future is that, much like the ramps and curb cuts that have gone before, accessibility features for household goods expand access for disabled people while also enhancing lives that of people who didn’t realize they needed these enhancements.