Accessibility is always something I’ve found myself advocating for wherever I go. As a Deaf person who wears hearing aids, I’ve always advocated for myself in life: from working around barriers during my live TV career, to sharing my experiences online, to educating strangers who ask questions and desire to prod my hearing aid. The shift to professionally advocating for accessibility to the extent I am now was mostly driven by joining Can I Play That?, a video game outlet that focuses specifically on accessibility in games.
Video games have always fascinated me, and I’d always enjoyed playing them, but I’d always found myself playing them in private because I struggled to understand them. I’d be unable to properly hear unsubtitled sequences, and most subtitles and HUD/text elements required sitting on the floor right in front of the TV. I also enjoyed reading video game-focused magazines that told stories and pushed thought-provoking features, and as someone that enjoyed writing, I fantasised about writing about games from a young age. But I let the struggles I faced with my deafness hold me back.
Years later, I shifted to creative roles that involved facing barriers head-on and improving my confidence. Things like working as a live TV camera operator and director. I’d grown more comfortable with my disability to some extent, but I was always overly aware of how most parts of my day were filled with trying to make my existence unintrusive to others. The years that followed were filled with dark clouds: liquidation, unemployment, abuse, and multiple losses, with only one light keeping me going through it all. I turned to writing about video games for fun, and this eventually became my new escape. By 2018 I had joined DualShockers. But there was something off about the topics I was writing about.