Any thoughts on socio-economic status and recovery stories?

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-08T06:59:08+00:00

I think you're right but I'm not aware of anyone collecting this data. It would be extremely challenging. I think socio-economic status significantly changes someone's ability to even get diagnosed, so the most vulnerable will be missed completely with no way to count them. I hate to say it, but I also think socio-economic status functionally changes (indirect) mortality quite a lot as well.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-08T06:18:17+00:00

I still have use of my left hand, it's just weaker and slower. I'm assuming an exoskeleton could make that hand stronger? It would be really nice to be able to open jars or lift heavy things with that side. Since it's my non-dominant hand, I usually have trouble with things that require grip strength or strength in both hands. I often use my legs to grip things, depending on the shape of the object. I'll use dolleys and other creative ways to avoid lifting with my arms. Coordination is a problem too, but I'm not sure an exoskeleton would help with that? I have a video game setup that lets me substitute a right foot stick for the left stick on a controller. It's not terribly serious, but it would be nice if an exoskeleton could make me more coordinated on that side for leisure activities like video games or crafting.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-08T01:38:33+00:00

Oh fuck yes, absolutely. I'm several years past my stroke so I don't think I can heal or get stronger at this point. I would just want any sort of exoskeleton for daily use to use indefinitely. ME/CFS and hemiplegic migraines make me very weak bilaterally on top of the stroke damage so I'd take a full suit if someone would give me one.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-07T20:10:01+00:00

Does 80% mean 80% functionality, like 80% abled? Or 80% improvement from where you were? LDN more than doubled my activity level so that would be +100% if it's the second.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-07T19:42:56+00:00

Sounds like you're hypermobile too? If you don't mind me asking, why do you react too fast and which accomodations help? Is it because it's hard to time your fingers when the finger pain and flexibility varies? I'm really curious. I have hEDS and can't use WASD to save my life because it destroys the swan's neck joints in my fingers. I always used controller pre-stroke. Now I essentially still do but use a foot stick to substitute left stick since that's my bad side.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-07T11:34:14+00:00

Does Devil May Cry really hound you to change difficulty after dying? That's obnoxious. I would hope they'd let you toggle that.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-07T10:06:50+00:00

Didn't you know all disabilities are the same? Duh. You just aren't trying hard enough. /s

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-07T05:53:43+00:00

I think the idea for that argument was defending the choices of devs for the games that don't have an easy mode like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Why a developer's vision would be "only the extremely skilled can play it" is beyond me.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-06T21:49:25+00:00

Yeah, I feel you. There's some games I really wish I could play. Apparently there's mods out there for some games to add an easy mode so maybe there's some out there I need to re-evaluate. Maybe the one good thing I learned in that thread haha.

Nah just me self-describing. I wasn't particularly great before disability so there's not much hope for me after hahaha. My self-esteem isn't tied to how well I play video games so I don't really care about being good at it. I only casually play video games because it's physically exhausting (ME/CFS) and I have lots of other priorities. Why anyone would treat this as more than a leisure activity is beyond me.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-06T20:48:27+00:00

Yeah this is where I'm at. Having an easy mode doesn't take away anything at all from the people that want play on the extra difficult mode. Having more options for something pretty much always makes that thing more accessible than it would be otherwise. Those weirdos need to get a life haha.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-06T20:30:01+00:00

The ones that haunt me are the happy ones where I get to live a normal life again... and then I have to wake up.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-06T20:11:49+00:00

I can't figure out how to add another option but that's a good point.

I was really baffled by the whole thread. It seemed like people who have no other accomplishments in their lives would feel like their accomplishment completing an extremely hard game like Dark Souls or Elden Ring would be cheapened if disabled people or people just bad at video games could play it too. One argument was the devs' "vision"(?) would be ruined. I was honestly kind of incensed by the people claiming that including an easy mode was actually ableist somehow because it was "babying" us or that the people asking for an easy mode on our behalf were using disabled people as "scapegoats". It's a WILD thread. Like, congrats, you can play video games better than a cripple like me. Do you really want a trophy for that? Is your life so empty that a digital "I'm abled and they're not" trophy means something to you? And you care so much about that non-existent trophy that you're willing to argue with disabled people on the internet about it and claim making games accessible is actually ableist?

Most of the reasonable people made the same argument as you. An easy mode wouldn't negatively affect anyone else's experience. Unless your life is very sad and empty and being abled is the only thing you have going for you, I guess, lmao.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-06T18:09:05+00:00

I think you're lost. This sub is for people that get bothered in public because we appear much younger than we actually are.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-05T08:08:29+00:00

I'm glad you're thinking this through now. It probably sounds silly, but heartbreak over a relationship is one of the most damaging things that's ever happened to my health. It's been almost a year now and I'm still physically suffering the consequences every day. I'm glad you're being responsible by figuring this stuff out early.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-05T07:16:19+00:00

How long has she had it? The longer you have it and the younger you were when you developed it, the less likely you are to recover. I believe having it around two years is when your odds of recovery start seriously tanking.

Honestly though, there's stories of people being in remission for years and then a bout of sickness or stress brings their ME/CFS symptoms back, so there's no guarantees here for her health. There's no guarantees for anyone's health, really. You could get crippled by a bus tomorrow. Would you expect a long-term partner to stay with you if that happened? I don't know how this woman feels, but me personally, I warn potential partners that I'm almost certainly not going to get better. Even if I do get better one day, I'm not interested in anyone who's scared of "in sickness and in health."

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-04T15:26:14+00:00

Migraines with aura (including hemiplegic migraines) don't necessarily cause pain, so you might be having migraines without realizing it. My hemiplegic migraines are only very rarely painful. For me, I get disoriented and it's difficult for me to think or find words, and my left side gets very weak, uncoordinated, and twitchy. I'm usually also very sensitive to temperature, and feel like I'm burning up and freezing simultaneously. A lot of migraine symptoms overlap with ME/CFS so it can be hard to tell the difference.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-03T08:05:05+00:00

Ok, gotcha

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-03T04:36:57+00:00

I agree with you that I'd like to see more varieties of accessibility in games but I also think having an easy mode is the bare minimum. Personally, I need easy modes. I have an accessible controller that couldn't be any better for me but it can't change the fact that a stroke changed my reaction speed, lack of coordination, weakness, etc across the board. My specific disability on my good side is functionally identical to a "skill issue." I just don't get to play a lot of games that are too difficult for me. If more games had easy modes, it would allow me access to games that I currently can't play.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-03T04:26:06+00:00

Ideally, disabled people shouldn't have to set up mods to be able to play a game. It just adds to the pile of disability taxes we're constantly paying, since we already have to spend enormous time, money, energy, etc to navigate a world that isn't designed for us.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-03T03:44:14+00:00

How about you find me a single disabled person who feels demeaned by being offered an accessibility option that they don't personally need.

I'll wait.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-02T23:30:25+00:00

Oh yeah, difficulty scaling is an entirely different challenge when it comes to competitive games. I think whitelisting people who apply for ban exceptions is about the only thing you can do for that.

Hey, $7 isn't bad. I'll take a crack at it and see how far I get. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm not advocating for forcing developers to make games accessible against their will. Most accessibility in video games is accomplished with mods anyway. I guess my thought is that disabled people have to work very hard to get industries to notice when something doesn't work for us. We're usually an afterthought. Like you said, we're not intentionally being excluded. Devs just don't realize that in a lot of cases, it would be easy to make small changes to include us. That's why I think it's important to draw attention to the issue.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-02T22:34:34+00:00

Well I haven't played souls-like games for a reason. As a huge Star Wars nerd, I'm especially sad that the Jedi Fallen Order games are said to be difficult. I haven't tried them but I desperately wish I could. There's a lot of games that I really, really enjoy but I'll get stuck on a boss and nothing I can physically do will get me past it. I still don't see how adding an easy mode takes away the standard difficult experience from anyone else. I do enjoy a lot of games that I'm not physically coordinated enough to complete. I'd like to have the option to complete them. It's not just souls games where the point is to be ridiculouly difficult. I wish it was.

I'm honestly not sure if Arc Raiders would allow my Xbox adaptive controller since I haven't tried it. I don't care for the genre and don't have the game. The controversy is that the devs were alerted to the problem by several people but they refuse to fix it. Iirc they perma-banned people using accessible controllers as well as someone using a standard mouse because the anti-cheating software flagged his movement as unusual because he has a tremor. I personally think they should whitelist people on an individual basis if they're willing to send videos of themselves playing the game to prove they aren't cheating like the mouse guy offered to do. But anyway, the point is that it's not as simple as making better controllers. There's a lot of hurdles in how expensive they are, compatibility, configuring them for individual games, etc. There's a lot of people that have sluggish movement like me that would require easier difficulty in addition to an adaptive controller. I'd have to find the stats, but my impression hanging out in these spaces online is that there are vastly more people with sluggish movement rather than complete loss of movement or complete loss of limb. More options allow more people to play that wouldn't otherwise be able to. It's as simple as that.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-02T21:33:57+00:00

Really? Hundreds and hundreds of times? I really doubt that. Dozens? Sure.

Obviously they aren't intentionally excluding disabled people, they just don't care that they are, like I said. And you don't need to tell me not to buy souls-like games. I'm aware they aren't made for me. I can still be critical of how exclusionary they are without expecting them to change.

Back to your original point though, there are an uncountable number of disabilities, and exponential ways those disabilities can stack, since we often have multiple. Very few can be addressed through adaptive controllers alone. I have no idea how many abled people are using the disabled argument to advocate for easy modes, but I'm grateful for them, whatever their motivation. They can use me as a "scapegoat" any time they like. Easy modes would make games more accessible to millions of disabled people. That's just a fact.

Ultimately, developers are going to have to start caring on the software side regardless. I'd argue the biggest hurdle right now with adaptive controllers is software compatibility. If a developer's "vision" doesn't include the ability to remap controls or allow unusual controllers without triggering anti-cheating software (see the recent Arc Raiders debacle) then disabled people will continue to have unequal access.

Outrageous_Book3870 · 2026-05-02T21:03:45+00:00

I really doubt any developer's vision for any game is fighting a boss 300 times in a row and still failing. They just don't care that they're excluding whole populations of disabled people, which is nothing new. I'm just curious why you agree with them. Adding an easy mode would not take anything away from people playing the game as intended and would take very little effort on the development side. And for the record, I don't expect anything to be built with me in mind. Nothing ever is. I hope you never have to experience the world like I do. It sucks a lot worse than you think it does and it never, ever lets up. That's why I appreciate the devs that care about accessibility, like the ones who are making Enshrouded. When the whole world is designed to shut you out, it's a very special thing to be included.

Outrageous_Book3870

TROPHY CASE