I'm not sure how to express my thoughts on this, but the subject matter and people's views on it is kind of disturbing and I don't think I'll feel satisfied unless I say something.
1. I understand players who don't want disabilities in their game at all, and I respect that. 100% I respect that. Everyone should have the game they want to play. If they don't want sims with disabilities, they should have that choice
2. I agree with those who say EA should focus on creating content that most of the community actually wants (I think only a handful out there in the community actually want a disabled Sim) There are a lot of features I would like to have before having my Sim have a disability
3. Unless EA and the Sims development team brought in real people with disabilities and talked to them about how they live their lives and took it very seriously, it would go very wrong very fast. Controversy and misunderstanding about what it's like to live with a disability is the last thing I want.
That said?
I want to say this as nicely as I can, but here it is, from the perspective of someone living with a disability (3 actually): Everyone's opinions on disability is disturbing and depressing.
I want to say that more nicely, but I can't.
Here it is: I'm really tired of disability being depressing and sad and a life not worth living in the eyes of people who don't have disabilities. I'm tired of people telling me what they think my life is like and how it's sad. Being blind, for me personally, is not sad at all.
I'd like to say before I continue that everyone, including the Simmers who commented already, everyone who lives with a disability is completely valid in how they view their disability. If living with one is something that upsets them or makes them unhappy, that is entirely valid. I won't tell someone with a disability how to feel about their disability ever, because their feelings are their own and it is their life, not mine.
But I'm still tired of people being sad for me. I'm very happy with my life with blindness, I have my bad days but overall I've been very happy the last year. Some of the people commenting on this thread, however, are treating disability like a tragedy and what's the thing I find upsetting. It (disability) gets bad for some people, and yeah, some are upset about it, sometimes life is hard and unaccommodating, but most people still feel like their life is a life worth living, including me.
I don't know if I want sims with disabilities in the game. I think a me-sim with a vision impairment would be really cool, but I don't want a whole year of work from the developers to go into that. If a friendly modder came around with a mod to add a disability like blindness, I'd probably jump at that.
Here's where the tea really is:
There's a forum post about a similar topic in Sims 4 PC Feedback, and it's a few spaces down from this one called "Making Sims 4 Accessible to the Visually Impaired Simmer" It's my post actually. It's asking for the developers to add gameplay settings to Sims 4 such as bigger font options, a screen magnifier and voice over, so that visually impaired or legally blind Simmers can play this game more easily. (You know, visually impaired Simmers like me) If you really want to help people with disabilities, start giving that post attention and start tweeting gurus about adding accessibility options for Simmers with vision impairments and other disabilities. That would be a great help to Simmers who love playing Sims but are finding it harder and harder to play as their vision decreases. I actually found someone on Twitter who used to play Sims before their vision reached a point where they could no longer play. So if you really want to help the disabled community, this is where you should start.
(This isn't meant to be angry, so please don't read it as such, but I am very passionate about accessibility and Sims, and I think accessibility changes are important, so please approach this comment nicely and don't get mad at me)
