“Blind Guy Wants To Play”
Staff Sgt. Matt Slaydon
U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Matt Slaydon is a gamer, like many other military personnel. His current game of choice is 4th Edition D&D, and he isn’t going to let the Iraqi roadside bomb that stole his left arm and his eyesight get in the way of his hobby.
SSgt Slaydon was an experienced explosive ordnance disposal technician on his third tour of duty in Iraq when a bomb left him with severe injuries, including the loss of his arm, the loss of one eye, and a complete loss of sight in the other eye. His story speaks for itself (far better than I can explain it), so head over to the Air Force’s Torch Magazine fully prepared to be utterly humbled by Matt’s heroic sacrifice.
Recently, Matt posted a message on the Wizards of the Coast message boards titled, “Blind Guy Wants To Play.” Because neither the WotC forums nor the electronic versions of the core rulebooks are configured for use with text reading software, Matt was having trouble getting into the game. He was able to read and post messages with the help of his wife, but that was obviously not a good long-term solution. The forum members had some great suggestions for running an RPG with a blind player, including some elaborate tactile grids with shaped playing pieces and even Lego dungeons. I thought the best suggestions were those pointing out that role-playing games are ideally suited for playing without sight, since you rely so much on your mind’s eye anyway. As long as the DM is skilled at describing situations and the other players help out with some logistics (looking up rules, tracking stats), then the actual play session should go pretty smoothly. And Matt doesn’t even need to come up with a character name – you can’t get much more bad-ass than a Dragonborn fighter named Ser Slaydon.
Still, that doesn’t help people like Matt read the rulebooks, create their own characters, or interact with other players online. That’s when Scott Rouse, Senior D&D Brand Manager, stepped in. He sent Matt free copies of the core rulebooks in PDF format, and is currently working with him to determine how to make the books compatible with Daisy, a prominent text reading application. Hopefully, Wizards can come up with a solution to make their game more accessible to blind players – it’s good to know that they’re on the case (there’s a certain irony in this post, because Robot Viking may not be accessible to screen reading software – it’s on my list of things to learn).
[Image by: USAF Torch]
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January 20th, 2009 4:29 PM
That’s pretty sweet. Buddy of mine who’s a Marine recruit gets back from boot Saturday. I’m looking forward to a couple games of MTG with him if we can find the time away from all the crazy welcome home festivities. Sargent Slaydon, you have my staff, and the help of the Drow.
January 20th, 2009 9:29 PM
Listen, I hate when people direct you to solutions that aren’t really what you asked for– but I’m wondering if DnD is the right game for this gentleman. I mean, I like the 3rd & 4th editions, but they both increasingly require minis & squares. Other rules are probably better adjusted for the “imagination” style of play.
January 21st, 2009 9:15 AM
I think that this is great. I wonder if WotC could get the books printed in braille.
January 21st, 2009 11:44 AM
What about using basically a chessboard numbering scheme to map the board? the DM could write the grid ID in the grid on the table, and the players could just get used to saying like ‘Ok, i’m moving the ogre into K3′. Although it may take some time to get used to it in very specific terms, it’d be pretty easy to say as a dm something like:
“Ok, there’s a large rectangular room, about 20′ wide and 30′ long. Theres a large table taking up most of the center. As you enter, two orcs jump up and grab arms. One’s at A5 and one’s at D9.”
That pretty much instantly paints the picture in my mind of where they’re at, and if I needed to get specific, I could spend a minute and calculate how far I am (I’m in A1) and how far they are.
January 21st, 2009 2:32 PM
I have seen several sets of Braile dice at GenCon every year, I almost bought a set for the novelty. Using beads or something of the sort for hit points, and some retooling of the char sheet could make this an easier conversion. Also, you could rerun a basic char generator in javascript that would read aloud the char creation process and use the numeric pad for input.
January 22nd, 2009 10:27 AM
I was very moved when I first read this post early this morning. I was in the Air Force and spent hours and hours playing D&D (back then it was AD&D) with my fellow Air Force co-workers. I was always surprised just how popular with was with the people in the Air Force. I guess that’s because the Air Force is the geekiest out of all the branches.
Anyway, I was glad to read that the Senior D&D Brand Manager got involved in helping him out. I was disappointed to read that when he first contacted customer support over at Wizards of the Coast, his email was ignored. How does the customer support person that received his email NOT make it the most important thing they have on their plate? My heart goes out to the guy.
Thanks for posting this Ed.