Comment on What are your opinions about 'handicap' features in games

AverageGoob@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• dumpsterlid@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It is all to easy to miss the immense benefits of accommodating accessibility for those of us who don’t need them though.

  Most people would generally agree that NASA working on the hard problems of going into space has benefited a wide variety of industries and sciences that aren’t directly related to space travel. Most people would generally agree that athletes competing at the absolute top of a competitive sport benefits everyone who plays the sport both from developing better form and techniques and from the technology and science related to the sport becoming more competitive over time. Those benefits often extend far beyond the sport. A sports doctor being focused on getting you rehabilitated from an injury so that you can specifically play sports again might be a much more effective doctor at returning your body to health than a normal doctor who just wants to get you relatively mobile again so you can get make it into work. That sports doctor is likely using science and methodology that was developed at least partially to help professional athletes rehabilitate their injuries.

  I hope we get to a point soon where most people would generally agree that accommodating accessibility needs for people with relatively “uncommon” disabilities benefits a similarly wide range of people and things. If a restaurant has to make their door wheelchair accessible, when someone has a medical emergency inside the restaurant and EMTs are trying to wheel the patient out the door as quick as possible to save their life, the effort that went into making it so someone can get into the restaurant who is in a wheelchair all of a sudden spontaneously improves the life of the victim by helping them get to the hospital faster.

  This isn’t a narrative that will just happen, we have to keep pointing it out to give it life.

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