Facebook Hates People with Disabilities?

Apparently in an effort to get their new years resolutions off to a good start, Internet giant Facebook took a stand against people with disabilities and elderly, asserting that a helper program that assisted people by minimizing the complex (and sometimes painful) clickthroughs required to play many of their online games violated their terms of service.

One saddened user comments:

"Thank you for running this as long as you could. Makes me sad it has to stop. I won't be playing any FB games anymore, I have serious typing injury and every click hurts, you saved me so many clicks. FGS was the only reason I played any games still and even dropped $5 here & there on them sometimes."

A volunteer who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal against her Facebook account, commented:

"I work with differently-abled clients on a daily basis, and the Friendly Gaming Simplifier was instrumental in our technology exposure activities. Many of our clients just won't be able to play now, and an important part of the services that we offer will be hampered by this shortsighted policy. I even had this set up for my grandmother at home, she has really painfully arthritic hands so it's hard to use the mouse, but with the Simplifier helper, she really used to enjoy social games.... she lives alone, you know."

More reports of people with disabilities or chronic pain are rolling in...:

"I also am disabled & FGS has been the only way I could advance in this game without spending lots of real money which on my limited (SSD) income I can't do. All that clicking is just too painful & I am too slow in my reactions to collect most stuff anyway. I think Zynga doesn't realize just how many disabled & homebound are on their sites. Taking FGS away will more than likely make many of us quit. I've loved the game & made many wonderful friends around the world. Why punish us for being longterm players who needed the gift that Flies has given us?"

.....
"In my personal experience, the browser extension offered by "Flies" has been the mitigator of tendonitis pain, among other things. It has also allowed me to participate in the game(s) in a fair and equitable manner, given the number of "neighbors" required to proceed in these games."

To make matters worse, Facebook even banned the talented developer of this groundbreaking accessibility work from developing any more Facebook applications, or even signing into facebook - ever.

Wow, Facebook.




Edit:

"disabled" and "handicapped" replaced with "people with disabilities" , more testimonials added