Saturday, April 13, 2019

Accessibility Discourse

@Discoursedrome in a recent thread about "do difficult videogames face accessibility issues?" identified a tradeoff between accessibility and specificity. Specificity is the way in which a game (or any creation) is special, in how it is deep or thick or high-context or interesting, that generates enthusiasm - which often involves weird and arbitrary limits. The difficulty of the Dark Souls games is their specificity. The more you make something specific the more likely that some people won't be able to enjoy it - ie. disabled gamers may have trouble with the split-second timing of Dark Souls games.

In cooking, a chef's eagerness to experiment with new ingredients (or new preparations of old and unappreciated ingredients) is their specificity, and it can conflict with people who are kosher, vegetarian, allergic to peanuts, have a gluten allergy, or low spice tolerance. If you've ever tried to cook a meal for 60 people with different eating restrictions, you know how limited your freedom for creativity becomes.

You can look at romantic norms this way too: traditionalism provides a lot of specificity about who you should date: the other gender, if you're both unattached, on a specific ladder of rituals towards marriage (with appropriate class and station concerns). Bisexual polyamory of the form "date who you want and make up the rules that work for you" provides a great deal more freedom to people who were left out of the old system, but in that freedom often leaves people feeling lost or unexcited about their paths. The overly complex song and dance of (mildly d/s) traditional norms had specificity that are not entirely replaced by the new rituals.

In straight up internet argument, specificity loses to accessibility, because in mass media rhetoric, how can "I like my meals to be interesting" stand up against "okay well some of us would like to be able to eat them at all." However, specificity as a virtue does not really need to be defended, because people will keep independently inventing it on their own and discovering that they really enjoy it. Most new and vibrant forms of art and communities have high specificity - whether it Speedrunning Conventions or Immersive Theater or Weird Twitter. There is always a hunger for this interestingness that unconsciously outpaces accessibility, until the systemitizers notice it.

(My rhetoric may sound like I am selling accessibility short, but let me assure you that when there is something everyone loves that I can't experience or enjoy, my blood boils and I want it erased from the face of the Earth. I get the emotion behind it, and do not think people are wrong to experience it and act on it.)

I'm not taking sides on that tradeoff (yet) and I don't even think that tradeoff wholly describes the situation, because there is another dimension: audience size. Are you creating for yourself, for your close friends, for a small niche market, for a large national market, or the entire world?

With a small intended audience size you can be both specific and accessible - you're cooking a dinner at your home for five friends and you know one is allergic to peanuts but that still leaves plenty of freedom to experiment with an interesting meal. The larger the group you make for, the more accessibility limits you, and the more difficult specificity gets. (Recall that on a global scale, you can't even count on people using the same language you do.)

All of these traits exist in tension, but can be compatible to some degree.

There is an old adage in construction: Quality, Price, Speed: Pick too. Which is to say of getting your building done cheaply, affordably, and fast, you're going to have to sacrifice one. I think the "pick two" applies here, and in fact circumscribes my philosophical perspectives at different times (ie, the three masks.)

Accessibility and size - universalism. Making something is truly supposed to be for everyone with no limits on where they are, who they are, or what they are capable of.

Specificity and size - cthughaism. (Or what I often refer to as humanism, but we'll trade ambiguity for using a new term here.) This is the perspective that interestingness, richness of experience, the new and unexpected and complex is the best thing, the only important thing, and seeks to maximize this in all ways. This means art that is spread to the masses, and if some people can not enjoy it, then hoping they enjoy other art.

Accessibility and specificity (with small audience) - tribalism. This is the understanding that you can make the perfect combination of openness and interesting if and only if you group is small and you know them well, and it is the opinion that this tradeoff is worth it.