# Boycott Neopets! -- and play these non-discriminatory games

Category: Accessible Games

## Post 1 by Flidais (WISEST IS SHE WHO KNOWS THAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW) on Wednesday, 27-May-2009 7:35:42

I haven't been on hear in ages, but came on to post a couple virtual pet game websites I like/help accessibilitywise and saw that many of you play Neopets. They blatantly discriminate against the blind and refuse to even listen to a blind person. Why might this be you ask? Well because Neopets is owned by Viacom a super large dehumanized corperation that so nicely hides all of Neopets contact info and any form of communication because they know they've screwed many a person and would be sued to the ground if these people were able to do anything about it, so why be hounded by the people they cheat when millions of others turn a blind eye to their crap and still play their game and buy their products?
Before you begin seeing me as a raving madwoman, read my LJ at
www.livejournal.com/users/voice4equality
it chronicles my blatant discrimination by Viacom. If you are as infuriated by this as I am, help the injustice be known and help force Viacom to stand up to their discrimination
Wow, ok now seriously, I'm not crazy, but discrimination sucks and again people get away with it cause there are millions of other suckers out there keeping these places in business.
So check out the below games instead if you're in need of some virtual pet fun:
www.furry-paws.com
Hi to all of you Furry-paw players out there. It's great that the site's so popular. It's my latest
addiction.
I also have to shamelessly promote www.capalls.com which is an online horse sim. I'm working with the staff to make it fully accessible, but for now it's still mostly manageable. If you check out the site and want some accessibility tips message me at user 4563
lastly check out
http://www.fay-sim.com/signup.php?ref=1401
yes I'm asking to be put as your referer
#1401
but it's a great site for anyone into fantasy/fairy type stuff. It's a virtual pet fairy game and completely accessible minus a few of the games, but that doesn't hinder play at all.
Anyway, I hope you all at least take the time to read my Neopets struggle and help join the fight to stop companies from treating the blind like this.
Enjoy!

## Post 2 by Daenerys Targaryen (Enjoying Life) on Wednesday, 27-May-2009 7:52:59

Cool I might start playing the Fairy game. I haven't played Furry Paws in a lonng time.

## Post 3 by Flidais (WISEST IS SHE WHO KNOWS THAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW) on Wednesday, 27-May-2009 16:57:45

If you played over a year ago and got any cool rare items, I'd love to take them off your hands if you won't be playing anymore :D
I've only played the last year so I missed a bunch of the cool holiday giveaways.

## Post 4 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Wednesday, 27-May-2009 21:38:43

When I did play neopets I had absolutely no trouble with it, besides one of the flash games. All the wheel games and everything else was perfectly fine for me.

## Post 5 by Flidais (WISEST IS SHE WHO KNOWS THAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW) on Wednesday, 27-May-2009 23:57:45

If you took the time to actually read my lj you'd know it wasn't an issue of accessibility that I hate neopets for.
They banned me for stating that I was blind and asking for help on the boards for accessible games. They then re-banned me for figuring out how to play one of the flash games half-assedly with jaws and accussed me of cheating because somehow jaws showed up as a cheat. They have since refused to restore or even listen to my side.
The uglier ruder details are on the lj. So again, it wasn't an accessiblity issue. Sorry you thought it as such.

## Post 6 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Thursday, 28-May-2009 12:37:15

I wonder y they didn't ban me thn, as I believe my username on that site was blindndangerous but its been so long since I've gone on there. Maybe I'll rejoin and see what happens.

## Post 7 by SunshineAndRain (I'm happily married, a mom of two and a fulltime college student.) on Thursday, 28-May-2009 13:36:17

Nice cause. Is furry-paws completely accessible? Does it work with PDA'S like BrailleNote and Pac Mate?

## Post 8 by Big Pawed Bear (letting his paws be his guide.) on Thursday, 28-May-2009 14:51:23

i posted the lj topic saying that if this user wanted to flag to fs that neopets thought jaws was a cheat prog, fs would probably sue the pants off neopets. then how fucked would neopets be?

## Post 9 by Flidais (WISEST IS SHE WHO KNOWS THAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW) on Friday, 29-May-2009 16:21:21

Furry=-paws is 100% accessible, though I don't use a notetaker so I can't garuntee that, but if the speech reads exactly like jaws on a laptop then yep, you're covered. If you do join feel free to ask user 668955 for help and I'll do my best.
MusicMan you really need to read my lj. I think you still don't understand what happened. But since i am spreading the word, here is the short version, so I can get anyone who doesn't read on the same page.
Incident 1:
They didn't say "oh you're blind I'm going to ban you"
I posted on their boards that I was a blind user looking for accessible things to do since all of the games are flash and mentioned that I received sighted help on the flash games, but rather than rely on help I wanted to do more independently. Their terms of service states that a person with a physical disability is allowed to get help from another person with their account and this is not considered account sharing which is a bannable offense. Well the paid moderator read my post and ban my account under the specific reason "this account was being shared by more than one person" which means that they either didn't care that I was blind and under my rights for help, or just believed I was a blatant liar. Not to mention after I posted I was hounded by tons of other users rudely accusing me of lying about my disability and yelling at me for being a horrible person. Granted others were very sympathetic, but needless to say my post asking for help as a disabled person resulted in my account wrongfully ban and myself being harassed by these ignorant users.
I tried to contact Neopets, telling them that I was well within my rights as a blind person to get help according to their own terms of service so they had no right to ban my account. The numbers I called yielded no help. Everyone claimed not to know anything or be capable of hitting that little "unban" button. I submitted weekly online forms designed for those who get their accounts banned and feel it was a wrongful ban, quoting their own terms and again no response. About a month later, with no warning, no appology, nothing, I logged into my account forr the hell of it (this was a daily hopeful thing) and they had finally restored my account.
Ok so again they were rude, but I was willing to chalk the whole thing up to plain ignorance and I was restored so I figured no problem right?
Incident 2:
When I began playing again, my significant other, who has worked as an assistive tech teacher for the blind, found that a few of the flash games actually could be played using JAWS. I was thrilled. You just had to route your jaws to pc, click so you're in the flash box, hit the jaws readable start button, then unload jaws so it didn't interfere with the controls. Granted you didn't know exactly what you were doing, but it was doable and you in no way got the points a sighted person would, but it was fun. Example, one game you roll your little neopet over hills using your right and up arrows and if you bounce right you catch fruit which gets you points, sure you don't know where he's bouncing but you just randomly hit the arrows and you can hear anytime he gets a fruit. Second game was two pets on either end of a teeter-totter, and you use the left mouse button to make them jump again to catch things that give you points. You don't know if you're jumping at the right time, but again you do it randomly with JAWS and can hear which type of item he gets. Lastly was the game that they accused me of cheating on. It is called advert attack. Basically it's a window and there is a go button that causes your character to fly across the screen in a race against the computer. However each round more popups are added to make the go button harder to find. This is completely playable with JAWS on. The high scores on the game were 990 and my highest score was 960 so again I didn't achieve a grossly unfair score and didn't cheat. Here's what I did and what got me banned. With flash the buttons appear as numbered buttons. After playing the game a few times, I found that button 8 was the go button, however if you took too long to find it, it would change numbers and then it was just impossible to figure out what it was. So I would hit start, then down arrow to button 8 as quickly as possible (a sighted person clicks on that go button and hits the spacebar as fast as possible to get your guy running fast) so I would down arrow with JAWS to the button and hit the spacebar as fast as I could, just like a sighted person. My one advantage was that since I couldn't see the graphics, the pop-ups weren't as obtrusive as they would be to a sighted person, however they still were a challenge since again if you took too long, your button would change numbers and move. They refuse to answer any of my communication attempts again, so I can't pinpoint exactly what part of the game they found as cheating, but I am assuming since I could initially find that "go" button faster than a sighted person possibly could under that pile of ads, they considered it a cheat.
Again, I played the game with the help of JAWS and nothing else and never got a grosely unfair score, so in my book I was not cheating in any way. When you get a high score on a neopets game, there's a message that says your score is under review by staff and if it passes then you'll get your points. I played that game for weeks and had my score reviewed over a dozen times without incident, however the last time I played I got scores of around 600 and those were sent to a review and the next morning I was banned. They banned my account and were communicative enough to let me know that they would not be returning it under any circumstance, after I wrote again and explained that they were mistaking my using my screen reader as a cheat. I even offered to go to their hq and show them in person what I did so they could educate themselves on JAWS and not do this to another blind person and the lady basically scoffed at my reply.
So there, that is my beef with Neopets. I wrote to every discrimination agency I could find because I don't want companies to be able to refuse to even try and understand a person with a disability, but nobody would hear me because it wasn't a giant class-action lawsuit. Even those agencies seem to only want profitable cases and the single cases of discrimination aren't worthy enough to be righted. So go out there, play advert attack with JAWS and I bet if your score is reviewed enough, you too will be banned as a cheater.