Tag Archives: games

Wii Fit Making Exercise More Accessible?

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A black box containing a Wii Fit Plus sits on top of a white box with grey and bright green letters containing a Wii Fit Balance Board.I read recently in an issue of Family Circle Magazine (DON’T JUDGE ME!) (There was a fried chicken recipe I wanted to try out!) that “Japanese research” (could they be any more vague and list any fewer resources?) indicates that using a Wii Fit burns just as many calories as doing moderate exercise. There was no resource listed, nothing. Just a blurb stating that there was some research going on in Japan telling us that the Wii Fit was good for us. I have read on random gaming and parenting boards that there is hubbub about the Wii Fit that it is exercise vs. still being “just a video game”…

Now, I don’t really care about calories as much (or at all) as I do having access to some kind of exercise or movement that I can do without having to leave my house and trek all the way up to the base, or pay for a pricey gym membership, or exhaust my silverware drawer trying to get there, or trying to get through a class of exercise that is of a safe level for my body. Sometimes I need to move. I’ve found our Wii Fit to be small chunks of movement that I can handle when I am ready for some, and unlike a yoga class, something I can stop quickly when I am out of resources. I could go on…but you get the idea. I still prefer a good swim when I have a good day, but we all know that our bodies do not always give us what we want…

Having a Wii Fit in my house has been something useful for me, and I acknowledge that there is quite a bit of privilege there as well. There are disabilities that don’t make the amount of movement required for the Wii Fit accessible at all. It isn’t affordable for everyone (and we had the console already when the balance board was released, but the board is not required for all the games), and the games aren’t released in all countries. Even on a good day I can not always use the board safely, and sometimes my old issues with eating disorders can’t handle some of the game details that include measuring your weight and abilities to balance…

But the Wii Fit has made exercise, and moderate amounts of movement, available to some people for whom it wouldn’t otherwise have been available and accessible.

What are your thoughts, gentle readers? Have any of you used the Wii Fit and been pleased with it, as I have? What are your major complaints with the idea that it is an accessible form of exercise/movement? Love it? Hate it?

Photo Credit: Keith Williamson

Recommended Reading for December 3

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Disableism Impacts Families

This choice that is being forced upon me is impossible. I must either tolerate physical pain at the hockey arena or emotional abuse at the dojo, if I want to be a part of my child’s life. It’s ironic that disabled mothers are often viewed as incompetent but where is the discourse surrounding the ways in which our parenting often occurs under extremely difficult situations? I suppose, of all the people on the planet that Destruction and his brother Mayhem provide the best reason for me to want to rise above, but the constant pain requires more of a super human effort than I believe that I am capable of.

Murphy’s Law And Disability: The Week From Hell

Normally, we get by. We get by pretty well. Provided we stick with the diet restrictions, usually we just switch off when one is a bit more able to get things done than the other. Chores basically go to whomever is in less pain at the time, or in less of a bad mental state or who can actually do them reliably without issue (like me defocusing and being unable to even read a recipe because I can’t keep on it). Usually even when the chronic shit we deal with is flaring the other one is just dealing with the baseline of the chronic shit for them, and the other disabilities coming up are all spread out over time.

Not this week though.

This week was the perfect storm of flare ups, semi chronic appearances and stress induced aggravations of all of the various things we deal with on a regular basis. While my partner fought off a pain flare, struggling just to walk, I was nailed with a “Richter 7? migraine.

Accessibility and Gaming: Randomizers

Most traditional six-sided dice may be tactile enough that someone who can’t see could feel the result. There are also special “Braille dice” available for not that much more than premium gaming dice; they’re more properly called tactile dice since the faces are traditional die pips and not true Braille numbers.

So, blind players can probably get their hands on accessible d6s, but to the best of my knowledge there are no tactile dice made for any other types of dice. Champions, anyone?

The wrong message – still

I don’t know who dreamed up the concept of “disability simulations” but they have been around for a mighty long time. My lifelong friend, Michael A. Winter, now the Director of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Transportation, first exposed me to the shameful practice. Michael and I were classmates at a segregated school for crips and met in 6th grade. We attended the same university. As undergrads, Michael formed a group called Wheelchair Action. When the Rehabilitation Institute at Southern Illinois University sponsored a disability simulation, Michael and members of his group stormed into the classroom and tried in vain to halt the fiasco.

Professionals who are nondisabled rarely stop to listen to the people who live with disabilities. I was proud of Michael for trying to get people to understand how destructive these simulations can be.

What Makes A Good Doctor?

Dean Tom Marrie is interested in hearing what kinds of qualities people value most in their family physician or specialist. What do you appreciate about your doctor? What do you think physicians of the future will need that might not be taught at med school today?

Recommended Reading for November 26

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They hate you. Yes, you.

Because the first thing people use on us is always, “It’s not about you.” When I was a kid, when I first started reading about autism rights, it was so instinctive: of course it’s wrong to say “cure autism now.” Of course it’s wrong to say autism is a tragedy, a disease, it’s wrong to give kids electric shocks, it’s wrong to say you thought about killing your kid in a video about eliminating autistic people from the gene pool. Like Sinclair says it’s wrong to mourn for a living person. All this stuff was plain and clear and bright, and I was autistic, and I was being attacked.

Right?

Well, not to anyone else.

YouTube now adding close captioning automatically

We received word from our new star writer Tara that YouTube will begin using a machine to produce close captioning for its videos. At first, the “auto-caps” will only be seen on a select number of videos of the nearly 20 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute.

This is an excellent step in the right direction to add more accessibility to the second most popular search engine on the planet. Deaf and hearing-impaired gamers will now be able to begin looking up cheat codes for their favorite video games just like everyone else!

Accessibility and Table Top Gaming: Rulebooks

To fully understand what accessibility means in a gaming context, game players and game designers need to think beyond simply what our own abilities are, and consider a larger audience that may not share the same physical abilities. If a game requires pointing a nerf gun at other players, how can you adapt the game (or can you?) for people who can’t point a nerf gun?

Also, proper accessibility for games requires not just that people with disabilities are able to participate, but that they can participate fully. In other words, in games with a Dungeon Master or Gamemaster, people with disabilities need to be able to take those roles as much as any other player of the game might. Game accessibility includes the ability to be the GM.

Captchas: The Bain of everyone’s Existence

So the question is how do you make a captcha accessible, without making it solvable by spam bots? There are actually many options. The current audio captchas include, typing in a set of numbers that you hear, and typing words that you hear. The draw back to both of these is that they can be difficult to hear, or too challenging. I often have to listen at least 2 to 3 times and then I still worry that I’ll get it wrong, but at least this option gives me the potential of being able to submit the form. Another option, and one of my favorites is to make the captcha a question that you have to solve, such as, “what is 2 plus four?” This is a simple math problem that most people should be able to solve, but it isn’t something a computer can solve. Finally, there soon will be a new option thanks to the work of the NFB and Townson University. They’re new system will use pictures of familiar objects and sounds that correspond to the pictures. If you are listening, the answer to the captcha is whatever the sound corresponds to. So for example the image may be of a lion, and the sound would be a lion roaring. The answer to the captcha is lion.

In the news:
New Grants Aim To Get More Disabled People Volunteering [UK]

Organisations can apply for grants between £250 and £5,000, which can be used to help overcome barriers that stop disabled people volunteering, such as specific equipment, a lack of suitable access and understanding of disability issues.

These grants are part of the £2 million ‘Access to Volunteering Fund’, which was developed by the Office of the Third Sector as a pilot scheme in Greater London, the West Midlands and the North West.

Please note: I’m in thesis crunch time now, so don’t hesitate to send me links to your own stuff, to other people’s stuff, or to the news, because my reading time on the internet is getting more and more limited. anna@disabledfeminists.com