It's such a subjective issue isn't it and an emotive one too. There are so many different disabilities. I became disabled after a bad flu virus followed by a medical mistake. It took a while to literally find my balance with it. I have my gaming when I have to sit still for a few hours on an afternoon and again in the evening. But my two closest friends are just coming to terms with theirs, and one has found the impact on her life and family really devastating. She has several types of seizures and paralysis so to represent her condition in a Sim would just be too much I think. Then that adds the other issue of care, many disabled people have assistance. I'm lucky to manage without it but do have great support from awesome friends. I also have everything delivered. So there's that side to consider too. I guess the butler career could be a starting point for that maybe, in terms of help in the home. Maids too maybe.
On the earlier point about therapy pets, we have those too in the UK. It used to be mostly guide dogs but it's expanded over the years. 🦮 Sometimes we train our own, I used to have an amazing Labrador who kind of adapted with me as I was figuring it out. He learned to pick things up for me and be a general support. Some of my friends have anxiety cats. (I have a little cat right now myself...but we are not currently speaking and he knows why! 😼)
I watched an amazing news story about greyhounds trained as anxiety pets. There was one example of an incredible dog who sensed panic in her owner and led her to a safe area then wrapped herself around her to calm her down! I'm not kidding, tears lol. 🐕🦺 They could add something more to the pets in the game already to do that. So when the Wants and Fears are overwhelming the Sim, the pet can calm them down.
People have suggested a therapy role in the game and that could also be simple to add. They could even start there.
But disability is such a wide ranging issue and they also need to fix the medical career because that is part of disability. It's buggy to the point it freaks me out! If you hate hospitals it's not going to help. 😨 Plus I'm on console so I can't fix it with mods.
I always think it's good that we're debating these things, especially for something as complicated as this one. I've been really glad with the progressive tone the game is taking, I want to see as much diversity as possible and I think they clearly want to add it. So I'm sure it's in their minds somewhere but maybe for the next phase since it's in the planning stages.
We may just get Sims with disability aids and no clear description of why and that may be the simplest thing to achieve. We might have to be happy with that and not go into too much depth with it because it's simply too big to cover even a fraction of the conditions out there.
