I suspect this is part maliciousness, part ignorance.
When I was an accessibility PM at Microsoft, I used to regularly explain to devs that they had to fix strobing/flashing bugs, because they were the only kind of bugs that could cause physical damage. It was amazing to me the number of intelligent, educated developers I talked to who not only had never heard of this idea, but flat out didn't believe me. I had a developer tell me bluntly that I was lying: there was no possible way that flashing pixels on a computer screen could cause any real harm, so stop acting like such a goddamned drama queen, wouldja?
Most people have no real idea what a seizure is, and no way to comprehend what it's like to have one. To them, epilepsy feels like ridiculous hypochondria, like the guys who wear tinfoil hats to keep the cell phone transmissions from giving them brain cancer.
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Date: 2008-05-09 03:41 am (UTC)When I was an accessibility PM at Microsoft, I used to regularly explain to devs that they had to fix strobing/flashing bugs, because they were the only kind of bugs that could cause physical damage. It was amazing to me the number of intelligent, educated developers I talked to who not only had never heard of this idea, but flat out didn't believe me. I had a developer tell me bluntly that I was lying: there was no possible way that flashing pixels on a computer screen could cause any real harm, so stop acting like such a goddamned drama queen, wouldja?
Most people have no real idea what a seizure is, and no way to comprehend what it's like to have one. To them, epilepsy feels like ridiculous hypochondria, like the guys who wear tinfoil hats to keep the cell phone transmissions from giving them brain cancer.