Does or should Wizards make a braille product?

[oceanic815]

I got to thinking about this on the drive home tonight. My eye sight isn't exactly the best. I am susposed to wear glasses but I quit wearing them in the 3rd grade, I am 27 now and am noticing that sometimes I have trouble reading small text like what is on the cards. I am not exactly worried about going blind or anything, just thought that If It actually happend them I would still like to play. The problem with braille cards would be kinda big. You would almost have to play against other blind players and if you didn't then wizards would have to print somesort of book with all cards in braille so they could be looked up. Also the time of matches would have to increase to account for the time it would take to look cards up. So do you think it is possible we could see something like this?

[Xcric]

no. the market is so tiny that it would be a waste of time and money. pure and simple.

as for your eyesight... get glasses.

[oceanic815]

I am not worried about my eyesight, just saying it got me thinking about it. I fail to see how you know for a fact the the market for the blind is any smaller then the market for the people with sight. I'm almost sure that they could enjoy the same things we do, with the exception of film. There are books and magazines printed in braille on restroom sings it is there also. why not a fantasy card game?

[Q 221]

Originally Posted by oceanic815

I fail to see how you know for a fact the the market for the blind is any smaller then the market for the people with sight.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that there are less people who are blind than there are people who can see. That would make the market for the blind smaller than the one for people with sight.

I'm almost sure that they could enjoy the same things we do, with the exception of film. There are books and magazines printed in braille on restroom sings it is there also. why not a fantasy card game?

I'd first like to point out that restroom signs having braille support is because it's necessary for them to be able to enjoy reasonable comfort. It's basically analogous to having elevator support for people in wheelchairs: if we didn't have it, it would be unreasonably difficult for them to visit those areas.

As far as the actual development issues would be:
It seems like it's not unreasonable to print art on braille cards, which seems like it would take care of the issue with sighted people: we already play cards in Russian when neither player can read the language. As long as the card is recognizable by a sighted player, and we've got judges to provide Oracle text, the sighted player would be fine. The issue would be that in order for the blind player to be in a position where he could properly understand the game, the sighted player would have to be playing with braille cards as well, otherwise it seems unlikely the blind player would be able to maintain his understanding of the game state.

The larger issue I can see is that braille cards would require a completely different printing process than normal Magic cards. I've never seen long sentences in braille, so I'm unclear as to whether we could actually fit all the necessary information on a standard Magic card, but odds are we'd have to increase length and width. Far more important is the fact that we'd have to deal with the fact that braille, by definition, protrudes from the card. This would make standard shuffling (and sleeving) impossible, without making a border around the card at least as thick as the height of braille letters. So now you're dealing with a much, much thicker card stock, and probably different manufacturing processes to get the cards. Packs would need new packaging as well. That's a lot of extra cost for a relatively niche market.

In addition, I'd expect Magic with blind players to be troublesome. A lot of decisions in Magic depend heavily on the game state, so you'd basically have to be constantly "reading" the board with your fingers. If you inadvertently missed a card, you could be completely misreading what the correct move is. There's also the issue of misplacing cards, since if one moves to the side or falls off the tabletop (an issue I could definitely see, given the cards' new thickness- ever tried to play with a deck sleeved in the hard plastic toploaders?), it would probably take some match-delaying time before they found it again. And don't forget that a lot of the reason Magic players can move at a reasonable pace when looking through large numbers of cards is because they can quickly identify cards by the art: resolving a search effect is much more difficult and time-consuming when you have to manually read every card's title.

Also note that every Constructed format beyond Standard, and probably EDH as well, would basically be locked to these players, unless Wizards plans on reprinting every past set in Braille.

[lionden_56]

Originally Posted by oceanic815

There are books and magazines printed in braille on restroom sings it is there also. why not a fantasy card game?

Cheating. Do you know why scrabble letters are painted on the tiles and not engraved? Because players could feel the engravings and figure out what the letters were. Making Braille magic cards means either using a thicker cardboard, or they will have a problem with the bumps being able to felt through the back of the card. And don't say "well, play in sleeves" because that defeats the whole purpose.

Also, braille signs on restrooms and things like that are required by law. They have to. As far as books go, there is a large enough market for books that it makes. There are far, far more blind people that read books than play a card game, unfortunately.

[AngelsRNG]

Somehow I believe that there is a very very small blind community wishing to play mtg, if any at all. Also if the cards had braille it would be easy for people to cheat when shuffling decks etc, there is already enough of that.

[mondu_the_fat]

Originally Posted by oceanic815

I fail to see how you know for a fact the the market for the blind is any smaller then the market for the people with sight.

http://www.nfb.org/nfb/blindness_statistics.asp

In 1995, 1.3 million people were considered blind in the US. The population of the US at that time was 262.8 million.

So yes, there are far less blind people than people with sight. So, yes, the market for the blind is significantly smaller than the market for those that can see.

While it can be argued that the total population of the blind is not conclusively indicative of the market of the blind who want to play magic, or that maybe the percentage of blind people has raised signigicantly since 1995, burden of proof is on you to show that that the market for blind people is comparable to the market for non-blind.

tl;dr -- market is too small

[Lithl]

Originally Posted by mondu_the_fat

http://www.nfb.org/nfb/blindness_statistics.asp

In 1995, 1.3 million people were considered blind in the US. The population of the US at that time was 262.8 million.

The number of people who actually need to use braille is actually smaller than that, since some people who are "legally blind" can still see things through coke-bottle glasses.

[pandafarmer]

Actually there was a completely blind guy who played competitive VS. He had a way to print braille on all of his sleeves so he knew what the cards did, and often had a friend or a judge he knew around to keep those he played honest. He was a VERY good player.

[Magic Mike]

Originally Posted by oceanic815

I got to thinking about this on the drive home tonight. My eye sight isn't exactly the best. I am susposed to wear glasses but I quit wearing them in the 3rd grade

You drive without glasses even though you need them? Please get vision correction of some sort (glasses, contacts, lasik). You are a danger to yourself and other people on the road.

[Binary]

Is it possible? Of course. Is it likely? Almost certainly not. I do not expect this would be a cheap production process as the cards would still need to be printed with enough information for sighted opponents to understand what the card is and what it does.

Originally Posted by oceanic815

I fail to see how you know for a fact the the market for the blind is any smaller then the market for the people with sight.

For the market for the blind to be larger than the market for sighted people, you would have to establish that blind people constitute at least 50% of Magic players.

Given that blind people only constitute about .5%-1% of the US population, I don't think we need to provide proof that the markets are of unequal size, and that the market for sighted people is larger.

[pstmdrn]

Braille would be fabulous! I am a special needs teacher teacher and advocate and it is very unfair for visualy impaired people that would like to play magic. There are few entertainment outlets for the visually impaired, especially in the Information age. Pen and paper RPGs are one good outlet, but it shouldn't be the only one.

Just because there is a small market does not mean those people should be marginalized. The people with gluten allergy are a small population and the market is flooded with gluten free products!

Your opinion seems kind of cold and only driven by business, the worse possible reason to make any decision.

[Aranthar]

Blind people have been known to play some games and sports by special accommodations (such as the braille sleeves mentioned) or by help from a person with sight who acts as eyes only.

I think Wizards could allow someone to play by something simple like the blind player wearing ear-bud headphones. Then a person who can see would handle the cards and tell the blind player hidden information by means of typing and a text-to-voice program.

The blind player would need a good memory, and all public actions would have to be described carefully. There are high level blind chess players.

It could easily be done by someone with a laptop, and would not slow play down too much. You might need a judge on hand throughout the match, however.
For example:

Spoiler:

Opponent: "Swamp, Grave Titan, go"
Typist types: "You draw Black Sun's Zenith."
Blind Player (if he has forgotten): "What are my lands and hand?"
Typist types: <Contents of hand>
Typist speaks: <Current lands>
Blind Player: Play BSZ for X=6.
etc...

[asw122]

Originally Posted by pstmdrn

Braille would be fabulous! I am a special needs teacher teacher and advocate and it is very unfair for visualy impaired people that would like to play magic. There are few entertainment outlets for the visually impaired, especially in the Information age. Pen and paper RPGs are one good outlet, but it shouldn't be the only one.

Just because there is a small market does not mean those people should be marginalized. The people with gluten allergy are a small population and the market is flooded with gluten free products!

Your opinion seems kind of cold and only driven by business, the worse possible reason to make any decision.

While I agree that there should be some kind of support for the visually impaired, I disagree with your last statement.

The fact is that WotC are a business. They are there to make money. For them, a cold, calculated business choice is not only fine, but its expected. If WotC started making decisions based on emotion, it wouldn't be good for the company. Sure, some may pan out, but without some kind of proper analysis, the only way to find out is to do it. Can you imagine what the shareholders would say if at next year's AGM, the CEO stood up and said "Well, we wanted to see if there was a market for braille magic cards. So rather than do a market research project, we just went ahead and printed them. Turns out there wasn't enough of a market, and between materials, specialist printing equipment and marketing, we lost a hundred million dollars. Sorry".

Also, there are other practical issues. If a blind player uses braille cards, he can only trade for other braille cards. I know I wouldn't have any or have any need of the, as I'm a sighted player, and therefore wouldn't open braille product, ergo, I couldn't trade with a blind player.

Then there's volume? How much would you want WotC to print. Assuming that the 1.3 of 252.8 stat is the base. So 0.4% of players are blind. Assume that WotC prints 1 million boxes of a set (I don't know the exact number, so I picked one that's easy to work with). So if they kept to 1 million, then they'd now be printing 960,000 normal boxes and 40,000 braille boxes. Where would they distribute them? Do you distribute them equally to every country or do you do it by what proportion of players they have? If you do it equally, then there are only about 570 boxes per country. If you do it by proportion, then almost three in every 4 packs would be in the US and Europe.

This is the thing. Making these gut decisions like "lets not exclude blind people" sounds great in principal, but its a huge undertaking and would take an incredible amount of work to sort out, and in the end, it would probably end up costing WotC more to set up than they'd make off it, and while you sat that cold business choices are the worst way to decide anything, that may be true of a person, but not of a business.

[pstmdrn]

@asw - Yes, I understand your points. My comment was a bit biased because I despise business and hard capitalism as a whole. I truly believe, especially in WoTC's case, that when decisions are based on increasing profit, certain aspects of the game suffer.

I think their main goal should be to put out the best card game that is readily available and easily accessible to all. They can focus making their big money off of admissions to high profile tourneys and other related products like mats and sleeves. In many countries (and probably portions of the US) the cost of playing magic can move it into an elitist hobby accessible to only the upper middle class and above. I think there are plenty of low income people that have a lot to offer the magic community, but feel hedged out by not being able to afford many cards.

In the words of the great Bill Hicks, "You think you're free in America? Try going somewhere without F****** money."