My brother passed away at the age of 23 because of a design choice

lutusp 12 years ago |

> he knew that gaming carried with it a risk; but that risk was exasperated [sic] by someone wanting a strobe effect here or a flashing explosion there.

No, not exasperated, but extended or increased.

timdiggerm 12 years ago | |

exacerbated, perhaps?

lutusp 12 years ago | | |

That's the word I was searching for. :)

dcaunt 12 years ago |

Perhaps an interesting discussion is whether games should provide options to disable features that might be dangerous.

erid 12 years ago | |

Absolutely, giving users an option to reduce effects or at least bright blinking lights would be a good idea. In the context of games I guess they don't think of blind or even color blind people, but taking into account epileptics may save some lives.

agersant 12 years ago | | |

More and more games feature color blind modes. I know some of the most played games of the moment have it: League of Legends, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts.

erid 12 years ago | | |

That's good to know, I went ahead to mention color blind out of an assumption though (even though I know even some web sites have them in mind), I haven't read anything about an option for epileptics, I wonder how that would work because making a game safe for epileptics is not only more work but if for some reason someone dies playing your game then you would be to blame, maybe that's because it's not done by big companies?

dcaunt 12 years ago | | |

I think they would still include standard disclaimers, just add the options and leave the risk with the gamer.

mmastrac 12 years ago | | |

I think there's something to be said for personal responsibility here. Games are known to have bright flashing lights. If you are epileptic, don't play games unless they are specifically designed to be epilepsy-safe (or have someone nearby to help).

ExxKA 12 years ago |

A misleading headline if there ever was one.

How has this tragic death got anything to do with how to design websites for ppl with visual disabilities?

nobodysfool 12 years ago | |

Yeah, he kind of glosses over the most important personal issue here.

http://trace.wisc.edu/peat/

That's a tool you can use which can analyze whether your website could potentially induce epilepsy. If it could, you can either redesign or simply display a warning.

However I found it interesting that there are some people who induce it on themselves by simply waving their fingers in front of their eyes... I don't think a game would have been to blame for someone's death.