There are things I’ve added as regular features to my writing and work in digital spaces that I hope don’t go ignored.
For example, I grew tired of dissociating while watching films because the desire to not spoil anything meant not accurately representing what a text is actually about. What you might consider a blink and you’ll miss it reference to self-harm can send someone else spiraling. Hearing someone scream out profanity or watching more intimate scenes might be incredibly upsetting to someone in ways a neurotypical person might never understand.
Hence, Sketching Details and any other site I work for that allows it gets content warning in the articles. It’s an easy way to provide more information to the reader. It also lets me advocate for changes in digital editorial standards and style guidelines. I’m leading by example and, on some platforms, I have people following.
I’ll take this a step further. Why use the phrase “content warning” instead of “trigger warning?” Some horrible, exploitative reporting led to “trigger warning” being a hotly contested phrase with deep political implications. Using the wrong phrase can derail an entire article because of the associations with that phrase. It can also be an upsetting moment for a reader whose own struggles were infantilized and mocked because they were discussed during the media hype surrounding the phrase.
Instead, I use “content warning” across all digital platforms. It accomplishes the same thing without the absurd societal and political baggage.
Accessibility is a huge problem still in the spread of digital media. It’s a lot of extra work to record all of my posts here (and elsewhere when permitted), but it’s worth it to better convey context and meaning for someone who finds it easier or necessary to listen to rather than read an article.
The same thing applies to captioning audio and video content. When I have the time to, I will caption by hand. It’s a labor intensive process for a layperson like me with a traditional qwerty keyboard. This is where auto-captioning software comes in. While not 100% accurate, it will at least take care of the work of timing out the captions for me. I have multiple services I use now that are better for different styles of content I produce. None of them are perfect, and for me they never will be. I have too many speech impediments competing against each other to be the typical user in these scenarios.
Auto-transcript software is, sadly, nowhere near there yet, hence why things like Spookier Times have a captioned video and audio version rather than an audio version and a print version. The amount of time I spend correcting automated transcripts is significantly longer than the time it takes to script, shoot, and edit a 20-25 minute video/podcast. I’m still looking and trying to find a more efficient way to do it, but it’s not the practical option yet.
All of this leads to a style of advocacy I’m not 100% comfortable with and probably never will be.
Last week, I started streaming on Twitch again. I’ve done all the good things I wanted to get in place for that. I’m working through my discomfort of streaming with a facecam because it’s easier for some people to understand commentary, tone, and intention if they can see the speaker. I test the audio everyday to make sure the balance is good and err on the side of loud, clear vocals over a more dynamic commentary/game balance. I found a great open captioning system that’s far more accurate and allows better customization options than I anticipated for close-enough-for-now live captions.
I try not to let my various physical and mental wellness problems obviously impact my day to day life in front of people. When I’ve been more vulnerable, I’ve been faced with either fear for my safety or infantilization of my abilities. I downplay, for example, my chronic pain so that people do not think I’m incapable of the things I do on a daily basis.
That means choosing as often as possible to shoot videos without support braces, bandages, or compression gloves. That means taking a lot longer than I’d like to adjust to the amount of light I throw at me to help mask the dark circles under my eyes from a mix of allergies and insomnia. That means editing out pauses in my speech pattern from PTSD where I will literally freeze in time while speaking to find the right words so my content is more comfortable to watch.
During one of those Twitch streams last week, I went into pre-migraine because of the game. I had two choices. One: end the stream immediately like I used to, laughing it off and saying I had to do something for work or take a phone call. Two: finish out the game and let you see what it’s like. That day, I felt bold and fed up and choose the latter.
I was playing Dead by Daylight, a game I love to play in spite of some fundamental flaws in design. I’ve advocated for years for them to add any form of accessibility options to their game, specifically a meaningful graphics options to adjust for brightness and colorblind options. The newest update, and I’ve said it before, is a brief mention during a livestream of more graphics options being in development. While it shouldn’t have taken over four years to be addressed in a meaningful way, it might finally happen.
In that moment on the livestream, I did a lot more than allow myself to be vulnerable on the Internet. I gave you a guided tour of the pain I feel on a regular basis. I walked you through exactly what I was seeing. The migraine was caused by the lighting design on a map that shifts so quickly from bright enough for my eyes to so dark it might as well be a black square that it has a strobe effect in my vision. I pointed out where the shifts in the level were and what I was already trying to do to compensate for the lack of accessibility options in game. I narrated where I was playing by sound alone and where I could see enough through the visual aura dancing in front of my eyes.
While I shared a lot, I was still masking the pain. If I really let you see what my face and body wanted to do in the moment (and did when the stream ended), you would genuinely fear for my safety and wellbeing. I don’t want to put that burden on you, so I held back where I could and transferred more visual reactions to narration. I’ve taught choreography to children after badly injuring myself before; I can mask the desire to throw myself on a cold floor and sob for 10 minutes to hours on video.
As I become more open advocating for changes in the digital realm that can improve the lives of people living with chronic physical and mental wellness problems, I become increasingly aware of turning into an agent of self-exploitation. You, as a reader or a viewer, do not need to know every intimate detail about my life and my health to understand the arguments I’m making here. I am in control of that spread of information. Sometimes, I have to cross my own personal boundaries of comfortability to best advocate for change. However, having those boundaries is also important to my own personal wellbeing. It’s a delicate line that I’m still learning to navigate as I start to find better answers for the whys of a whole lot of medical concerns in my life.
Years of writing about the need for accessibility options in games has actually had an impact on the industry. I’m not delusional. I know I’m not the only one advocating for this. I can claim small victories here and there, specifically on indie games. I’ve seen developers interact with my writing or videos where I mentioned “these options are great; this option would be better” actually implemented those changes weeks to months after release; some have even come back to tag me in the update. There are many of us advocating for these changes and our voices are slowly being heard. You might not notice how many more games allow custom key binding, subtitles, alternate color/brightness schemes, etc., but we do.
I have no plans of constantly making video content about why I’m advocating for an industry standard of gamma/brightness/color options in gaming from a personal perspective. I will continue to show what those menu options look like in games and mention what could be done better. That one stream that I edited into that one video is meant to be visual evidence of how people like me are trying to have fun in spite of Dead by Daylight’s programming causing us discomfort and pain. I do not believe I should have to expose myself like that for my clear arguments to be understood. We say accessibility matters because that statement alone carries value.
