i remember this because by fgc standards im ancient, but there's an old nippon TV documentary where they followed around a blind player named brice mellen during the heyday of MK Deception and talked to him about being a top player in his community and his blindness, and they flew him out to japan where a bunch of the top players at the time - Tokido, KSK, Chibita, MOV, Nuki, lots of the Tougeki / SBO usual suspects, all challenged him in a kumite, and he of course destroyed -everyone-
at the time the usual excuses came out, "oh but japan doesnt play MK, if it was 3rd Strike it would have been different, etc" - on top of an entire world of the only kind of ableism you could expect from certain big fighting game forums in the aughts
but it was cool to me because blind players have always been here, but the scene's ableism and tendency to punch down at anybody different would try to lead you to believe otherwise, and thats why its so cool to have better ingame options to better serve them
the full video might be lost media at this point but there's this short clip from it
