Amplifying Accessibility: Sadie Tasker

What’s your relationship with Accessibility and Disability Representation?

JARVS
Full-on cold opening, okay!

I am Disabled and Neurodiverse, myself. I work in the games industry, but I used to be a teacher. A huge part of why I wanted to be a teacher was helping kids who are often marginalised and pushed to the side in class, because they have needs that are not met by regular education. That’s where my passion lies.

I taught Drama, but when you suddenly find yourself in a wheelchair you also find it’s quite difficult to choreograph, climb up stages, and do everything you need to do! So I had to retire; left with no career at 28 years old. I just thought… okay, what do I like? Videogames! How can I work in videogames?

Very quickly I realised that barriers to entry in videogames are very high anyway. And when you’re Disabled that makes it ten times harder. I couldn’t even apply to a lot of jobs because they were in buildings that weren’t Accessible to me. The job that I most wanted, and would’ve done to an extremely high standard, was completely out of the running because the office was up lots of stairs and I couldn’t even get inside.

Right then and there I decided I am going to work in games, and I am going to make it more Accessible for developers! My belief is that if you can’t have authentic voices telling stories, then those stories will never be truly authentic or worthwhile. Representation is so important. We’ve seen true representation starting to come through for LGBTQ and POC stories, but we still have a long way to go for Disabled rep in games. I don’t think that’s going to happen until we get more Disabled and Neurodiverse devs behind the scenes.

ELIZABETH
It’s absolutely fascinating, and honestly a bit emotional, just how similar our stories are! We both have that theatre background that then got scuppered by our symptoms, and then our immediate thought was: “What’s exactly the same but different? Videogames!”

That’s so funny to me, but I feel an excellent kinship forming immediately! [Laughs]

JARVS
Oh, hell yeah! [Laughs]

With videogames, it’s always been my passion – but it’s also, as a Disabled person, been my escape. When I’ve been stuck in bed for months at a time, and couldn’t socialise in real life, gaming has been the thing that has kept me going. Given me escapism, community, creativity. All those things that would’ve been taken from me, were given back to me through gaming.

To be part of the industry, and to be able to give that to others in the same shoes as mine, is so meaningful. So meaningful.

What is a community manager? What do we even do?

JARVS
[Laughs aggressively sarcastically]  That massively depends on where you work, and who you ask! Our job seems to be one that nobody truly understands. Any two studios will be different!

I think a lot of smaller businesses will see a community manager as just marketing in general, and not really know how to knuckle it down into something specifically for community. Where I work now, at Raw Fury, they’ve got a great balance. We’ve a group of community managers, and we all specialise in different things – which I think is really cool! A lot of people think community managers just run Twitter and that’s all they do! They don’t realise how multi-pronged you have to be to be a community manager.

I’ve had friends be like, “Oh, I can do that, easy.” And you have to bring out the list of: Can you do graphic design? Can you edit? Can you stream, host, run events, do interviews, manage content schedules, be consistent, do market research; do you have the strong creative and analytical skills to cover all the bases nobody else on the dev team is going to, because it’s not their job? It’s a lot of work!

Tasks aside, at the true core it’s about listening to your audience – finding out what matters to them – and communicating that back to the dev team. It’s being the voice of the community, and the voice of the devs to the community. You’re kind of the spokesperson for both – which is an interesting challenge! I love that, because I love people!

I work in indie, and I’m so passionate about indie games and indie developers. Getting to help dev teams share their passion with the world… I couldn’t ask for anything more.

What does it mean to “represent” your company as a Disabled person?

JARVS
Everything, for me. As I say, I got into this industry to make a difference for Accessibility behind the scenes. I make a really big, conscious effort to be visible, as a Disabled person in the industry.

Community management is one of those places where you can be visible. For example, I get to go to EGX and do stage events. When I was in my previous role, I did a showcase on the Main Stage at EGX with the guys from WhatCulture Gaming. I was the first person to have ever been on the Main Stage in an electronic wheelchair.

ELIZABETH
Hell yeah!!

JARVS
And they had to figure out how to get me up there! Because they’d never built a ramp for it before! In the same year, I did a talk on the Barclays Rezzed stage – again, never had a wheelchair user on the stage either! I had to basically be lifted onto the stage, and that was humiliating.

But when I came back last year, it was so sweet. The people who organise the Rezzed stage ran over to me at my booth like, “Come over! Come over!” And they had a ramp installed already, and they were so excited to share it! That means so much to me. Because my doing that the year before meant that anyone who needed the ramp this year didn’t have to fight for it.

The same with just being on the Main Stage. I had people come up to me throughout the weekend, saying: “I’ve never seen myself in game dev before, and there you were on the stage in a wheelchair. Now I think I can do it.”

And that made me cry. That’s why I do it. I just want to show others that they can do it too. I might not be able to teach kids and inspire them in the classroom anymore, but at least I can show Disabled young people that there is a way into games for them. And community management is a great way to do that, because you are so forward facing in the industry.

How Accessible do you think Community Management is, as a role?

JARVS
It massively depends where you work. It’s more Accessible now, because post-pandemic remote work is much more common. However… we still have a lot of studios that’re very much stuck in the old ways, where they think you’ll only be productive in an office, in front of them… ‘cause you’re a child and can’t be trusted to work!

I’m really lucky with Raw Fury. My Disability is to the point where I need a carer, and my husband is my carer. I need his support when I go to events. Raw Fury doesn’t even bat an eye. They paid for him to also go to EGX, and our own company events like Fury Con; they’ll fly him out anywhere, and always make sure we book Accessible flights.

Equally, at other places, I wouldn’t even be hired if they knew that was something they had to do. And it does make a difference, unfortunately. It’s one of those things that eats at you. If you have an interview that you think went amazingly, and you don’t get the job, it’s always at the back of your mind: is my Disability the reason they didn’t hire me? And… sometimes it is. And it is gutting.

We’ve still got a long way to go, but there are a lot of studios like Raw Fury. A lot of places that are championing us, and the more we – as employees of those companies – tell other people about them, the better. I will never stop talking about how amazing Raw Fury are, so that other people know that and can apply to us and champion us.

That also puts pressure on other studios to be better. “They’re doing it, they’re getting all the good employees… Maybe we should do it too…”

ELIZABETH
Absolutely. That is, in large part, a motivation behind my various interview series. It could be I’m not casting a wide enough net, but I very rarely see a lot of studios that are vocal about Accessibility, or representation – of any sort. You just do your fancy little rainbow profile picture and call it a day.

And, to an extent, I understand it… It’s often those AAA big dogs that have all sorts of barriers to presenting exactly how you want, whereas Glowmade is totally independent and can be vocal about absolutely anything, but I’m also like… Get it together! [Laughs]

JARVS
At the end of the day, though, they’re the ones who can make the biggest impact – because more eyes are on them. I would say, actually, no; it’s not an excuse. You have more people working for you, which means you should have more brains behind bringing better ideas, so what’s your excuse?

ELIZABETH
Y’know what, you’re right. Yeah.

JARVS
It’s just not good enough.

Recently, with AbleGamers – which is an American charity equivalent of Special Effect – I did one of their courses called the Accessible Player Experience Course. That allows me now to go into studios and help devs make games more Accessible. And it was just eye-opening, to see the statistics we were taught – just how many Disabled players and devs there are, in relation to each other.

The key takeaway was how Accessible games benefit so much more of the player base than just Disabled people. And yet it’s still not a thing that is at the forefront of gaming. Like, why?! Why is this the case?! Because these facts are facts, and you either don’t seem to know them or you don’t seem to care about them. More studios need to pull their fingers out and get a move on catching up with the rest of us.

ELIZABETH
I think most often, as you just said, it comes down to a case of either ignorance or indifference. And neither of those can be tolerated as we keep moving forward as an industry.

Ignorance is not an excuse for discrimination, and if you don’t care about the games you’re making and why… then what the hell are you doing here, when the last few years have been so devastating for devs everywhere. We need passion for positive change more than ever, because otherwise how is anyone supposed to want to keep fighting for the industry at all?

How do you think the games industry interacts with Disability?

JARVS
When it comes to the stories it tells? Terribly. Terribly.

Nine out of ten times, when someone has a Disability in a game, it’s something to be fixed. It’s not just one part of the person: it’s the focus of their storyline. Why can’t Disabled people just exist as people, and it not be the one thing that you care about?

Can you imagine if they did that with race? Just for a minute, imagine if a character was Black or Asian, and the entire focus of that character was the fact they were Black or Asian? That would be unheard of – it’d be the worst thing you could possibly do!

ELIZABETH
And you can’t – or shouldn’t – frame that as something to “fix” either! If a character is Black, their story arc isn’t going to be to make them not Black! You would hope!

JARVS
It’s so dumb that we’re not met with the same approach as any other minority would be.

There are games that do it brilliantly – Hi-Fi Rush, for example, is one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever played through. Both the main leads were Disabled. Nothing stopping them, nothing made a big deal out of! They have metal limbs, and it isn’t mentioned again! They were two of the most badass protagonists we’ve had for ages… aaand then they closed the studio.

I just feel people are afraid to tackle it, because they don’t want to get it wrong. But do you know how you fix that? You hire Disabled developers!!

Which brings me to the workplace, more studio-y side of this question. The industry is huge, but being Disabled can really isolate you. It’s primarily left to you to champion yourself. Most places don’t really know what they can do to help.

Part of that is down to your government. The UK offers something called Access to Work, where they will send someone out to do an assessment and see what they can do to help you meet your needs in a work environment. They put adaptations in place, while your company pays 10-15% and Access pays all the rest. That allows you to get specialised wheelchairs, software for screen-reading, all kinds of things – but no-one knows about it! The government for sure doesn’t shout about it or even try to let people know!

But companies should know about it, when it can save you forking out thousands of pounds; because, let’s face it, Accessible equipment is ridiculously expensive!

ELIZABETH
It really is! It’s shameful, honestly.

JARVS
My wheelchair cost £2,500, and I wouldn’t have been able to get it if not for Access to Work. But now I need a new one, and I can’t afford it!

But that’s something that stops employers hiring Disabled people, because they see it as an extra cost they wouldn’t have to justify on hiring someone who doesn’t have those needs. So they don’t look, they don’t ask, and they keep having no idea that there’s a way around it… so the barrier for entry remains extremely high for people with Disabilities.

You ask how the industry interacts with Disability, but it has to actually interact with it, instead of just holding it at arm’s length and not knowing what to do. It’s an amazing place to be, and I love the work I do, but studios everywhere need to take more accountability for actually opening doors and leaving them open!

What does equity look like to you, moving forward in games?

JARVS
I wish I knew, but right now I kind of don’t. We’ve got a long way before we’re gonna get there, so it’s hard to know how to plan for it. I think even just the idea of people understanding what equity means is really important. A lot of people still have this backwards view of, “Oh, that person’s getting help, and I get nothing. We’re doing the same thing, how is that fair?”

Well, actually, that person isn’t getting a leg up on you. They’re getting the same thing you are, but they need extra help or resources in order to get that. It’s not the same thing.

I think that education needs to happen. Every single studio should have an Accessibility Ambassador or Consultant on staff, or at least have someone come in every year or more to ensure education on these topics stays present.

Certainly, governments should be working hard to ensure those goals and roles are attainable across the industry. Gaming in itself is the fastest growing industry in entertainment. It’s the biggest, for sure. It’s bringing in tax dollars to countries all over the world, and it benefits so many people; why are we not helping the people in that industry?

Lastly, do you have any favourite community interactions to share?

JARVS
My favourite thing ever was what I did at EGX. Having people come up to me afterward and talk to me about how much it made a difference to see me onstage in my wheelchair. Because that’s why I do it, and it meant everything to know that – even if it just inspired one person – it was worth it. Worth the hassle of having fifty phone calls about how to put a ramp into place, and whether my wheelchair was too heavy for it…

ELIZABETH
How hard can it be just to make a slight incline?! Honestly…

JARVS
I know! [Laughs]  To their credit, they tried their hardest. And, ever since, I’ve seen them make a big effort on the Accessibility front.

And just to give another, if I can, is seeing other Disabled and Neurodivergent people in the industry kicking butt. It’s the best thing ever!

Flop, who you already spoke to, is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met. Even when they’re on their lowest, most no-energy day, they still put themselves out there. They still champion the rest of the community. Seeing the community’s response to Flop, and how much they’ve embraced them, is just beautiful and I love that! I want to hold them up as an example of the most positive, wonderful bean in the industry!

We need more Flop’s, we need more people who are out there shining the light on how amazing the Disabled community is – and how much we can bring to this industry! The work, the passion, the personality being put into our communities by people like us is amazing, and part of that is our not being afraid to be visible about it!