What should the scope of the [accessibility] tag be?

Question

Today I created the accessibility tag for our now-growing category of posts dealing with issues such as blind players, prone players, dyslexic players, autistic players, etc. I also tagged one post (How can I help my PCs remember clues that they found?) as accessibility as well.

This is why I am asking this question. The latter post that I mentioned does not on the face of it seem to have to do with accommodating disabilities or special needs, and (presumably) for this reason @SevenSidedDie untagged it from accessibility. I would argue that this post is an accessiblity issue, however. First of all, Wikipedia defines accessibility as accommodating all people, especially those with disabilities or special needs. I paraphrased this in the tag excerpt for accessibility. Secondly, the post in question has one answer where the answerer states specifically that they have had these issues in cases with players who had learning disabilities.

Obviously not all questions that have to do with making the game the best experience for players should fall in the accessibility category, but I think that this question should because it deals with a specific problem, that is very much like an issue that one with disabilities might face, that gets in the way of having a good gaming experience for everyone.

How should we treat posts like this? Should we tag them with "accessibility" as I did (resulting in reverting SevenSidedDie's edit), or should we refrain from tagging them as such for the sake of clarity?

I think that we could benefit from having posts like this together in the accessibility category, as it will help people who are having issues like this to find the information that is out there.

Answer 1

We need to more carefully define "accessibility." I do not think the tag is inherently too broad, but I think it could be better defined so as to avoid that path. Here is my proposed definition:

Accessibility is only for questions whose contexts require that the normal routes to play and/or solutions to the issue are not possible, and which require changes to the gameplay or mechanics to accommodate. In other words, accessibility is not about making games easier or getting people to work together. Accessibility is about situations in which normal methods for gameplay do not apply.

For instance, the question "How do I get my players to better remember the rules?" has nothing to do with accessibility, because no unusual means are required for gameplay; this is something most people have to deal with at some point. However, the question: "How do I get my memory-impaired players to better remember the rules?" is accessibility, because the normal methods for teaching and learning rules may not apply.

This means that the tag is very specific, and is useful in searches. Its purpose would be clear.

Answer 2

Here's my attempt at defining the scope for this new tag:

The tag should be used when a question's core focus is a physical or mental disability not found in most participants, preventing an optimal session.

The tag covers temporary and long-term disabilities as such issues and their solutions generally don't change just because the disability lasts a short period of time.

If the source of a problem is not explicitly such a disability and may be explained by other reasons, then the tag does not apply.

If an issue initially deemed to only apply to disabled participants were to objectively match a more common issue applicable to most gamers, the tag would not apply.

(definition edited based on comments)

I would include all the OP's questions under the tag except for the one about remembering quests specifically for the reason that the question does not explicitely state that the memory issue stems from mental difficulties. One may assume it comes from a willful lack of attention for example.

Answer 3

I believe that SSD was correct in removing the accessibility tag from the question. I have a strong background in working with accessibility in an educational context, and can understand why you felt that the question should be tagged in that way, but ultimately I don't think it should as I think it would widen the scope of the tag so much as to make it far too broad.

The issue I see is that if we tag any question which is in any way linked to accommodating a certain group of people, then it will become extremely difficult to know where to draw the line. For example, there are questions on here that relate to 'categories' of players and how best to ensure GMs design their sessions in order to cater to them. You could argue then that it is about accessibility, as it is talking about accommodating a particular group of players in the same way as the question you have raised as an issue.

What about questions to do with improving the legibility of hand drawn maps, or using index cards as a GM to help remember NPC stats, or ways of organising notes so that they are easy to locate and remember that touch on the use of mind maps, colours and images?

Answer 4

We use tags to categorise the content of a question. They may be useful to other people for other reasons than the original asker's reasons, but we don't tag for every hypothetical and real external motive for reading the question. (The five-tag limit is a feature to help encourage the specificity of tags.) In particular, we don't tag questions after the fact based on answers people give.

I agree that it's a very useful question for accessibility concerns, but it's not about accessibility. It could equally be extra-useful for GMs running a sandbox campaign, but the question isn't about running a sandbox campaign so we don't apply the sandbox tag either.

The thing about tags is that they're hyper-focused labels on a question so that they can be grouped by question topic. They're an excellent supplement to our search feature, but they're not a replacement for searching the site. A GM needing help with players' memories, regardless of the reason, will find that question via search because they are looking specifically for questions about players' memory. If we start tagging with non-content tags, each question could potentially have many, many new tags that would suit, but that would make the tag system unmanageably and degrade its utility to the point where no-one would use it anymore.