Post AdYIbmTkWdEbuKigDI by oddtail@meow.social
 (DIR) More posts by oddtail@meow.social
 (DIR) Post #AdYIbmTkWdEbuKigDI by oddtail@meow.social
       2024-01-05T14:08:06Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       (pinging @LauraKBuzz , would love if you Boosted this)I'm left-handed. About 12% of all people are. That's roughly one in eight, so it's not a tiny minority.Statistically, among your close-ish friends and family, about 5 to 10 are.Who cares, right? But let's talk abt this for a second. I promise I have a broader point.My sister, late 40s now, was forcibly converted to right-handedness at school (well, ambidexterity. Still). There are people who remember going to a school at a time where they were more likely than not to be converted with outright verbal abuse and possibly physical violence. It's not ancient history.But, that's not the case anymore. At least not in my neck of the woods. So, case closed, right?Not really. I won't talk about left-handed experience in full, I'll just rattle off a few minor points to illustrate. Some highlights, if you will.1) Every object I interact with where handedness is relevant is not for me in small ways.2) When in a restaurant or at a dinner with more than 3 people, I always do the little dance to sit at a spot to the left of the table. Otherwise, both me and the person to my left are in for a bad time and a lot of elbow-bumping. It's almost nothing, but it's a constant. And that's just one such situation.3) When I learnt to write in school, I would smudge what I wrote a LOT. I didn't understand this was due to my left-handedness, because no-one ever bothered to think about it and tell me. And I never wrote with my right hand, because my left hand is very strongly dominant.4) Speaking of, my handwriting was terrible the first few years of school. To the point that my homeroom teacher gave me a hand-written note at the end of grade 3 and a book as a gift in acknowledgment of how many hours I put in to learn how to write legibly. We're talking 100s of hours on top of how many the usual student spends practicing their writing. I was a gifted student, so I had time for this, but still - I spent more time learning to write at age 7-10 than learning *all* school subjects, COMBINED. I doubt a less academically inclined student would have the time. But here's the secret that neither I nor my teachers understood (and they didn't adjust their teaching methods accordingly!) - when you write in the Latin alphabet and you're right-handed, your pen leads the text. When left-handed, it follows it. Hence the smudging, and hence the lack of immediate visual feedback as to the shape of the letters. If you think that's irrelevant, write a sentence in cursive with your eyes closed. Go ahead.5) I always knew scissors were a hassle, if their handle was not symmetrical. For obvious reasons. But I was, I think, 33 y.o. (!) when I realised most people can see the exact line along which they're cutting. Scissor blades aren't, CAN'T be, fully symmetrical. No effing surprise I always struggled with that, a bit.And like... one in eight ppl are left-handed, so are one in every 8 pairs of scissors left-handed? Hahaha, no. Most stores don't carry those. There are places to buy left-handed stuff, usually not for cheap.I don't struggle much. But it all adds up. Very "death of a thousand cuts". Even though I'm able-bodied (other than glasses) and privileged in multiple, MANY other ways.And if you're thinking "there are people who have much bigger issues and struggle more, and they receive no accomodation"?One, I'm glad you think abt those ppl, I almost guarantee you didn't until 5 minutes ago.Two, careful. You're getting perilously close to my point there, hun.#accessibility
       
 (DIR) Post #AdYIboXMs9JkI8Qb8C by oddtail@meow.social
       2024-01-05T14:21:34Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @LauraKBuzz Oh, and it's not just that there is no concessions made to 12% of the population.Link, the video game character, is canonically left-handed. Always has been.("Links" is German for "left", I don't know if it's intentional or coincidence, but I think it's cute)The first Zelda game to use motion controls had some lines of code added after it was completed. The only purpose of this addition was to flip the screen horizontally, because obviously a right-handed person would have trouble swinging a sword with their left arm.Which is fine. I get it. Most people playing the game will be right-handed. I don't mind. It's FINE.But, to my knowledge (and I'll be happy to be corrected), even though the game was already written in such a way that left-handed people would do better with it, the option was NOT left in after the screen-flipping, at least not initially.Let me rephrase that. After a change was (justifiably) introduced to accomodate the majority, they left out the option that accidentally made things easier for the minority.There was no reason for it other than the reflexive assumption that left-handed people don't matter.Think about it for a second.EDIT: how much do you wanna bet that if an option was introduced to make things easier for left-handed players for a character that was originally right-handed, quite a few people would instantly rediscover their passion for the franchise canon and say that this little change was inexcusable, because it goes against the original author's intent, who clearly made the character right-handed?Do you remember any such outrage about Link being right-handed? No, I didn't think you would.
       
 (DIR) Post #AdYIkX3HFfhUfTVhq4 by qrazi@phpc.social
       2024-01-05T19:03:30Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @oddtail Very interesting! Also reminded me of back in the day when as teenagers we'd play Counterstrike in its beta phase, and the weapons were all left handed. I think I started with beta 4 and the switch to select weapon hand was introduced in beta 6 from what I can find on the internet. E.g. https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Counter-Strike_BETA_patches/March_10,_2000