Deaf accessibility. Why isn't there any?
I love this game, I've almost hit 100 hours over two weeks already, but I was born deaf, and the vast majority of gameplay is audio based. Killer, you need to listen for grunts of pain from wounded survivors. Survivor you need to listen for an audible indicator for skill checks, and the terror radius is purely audible. I main survivor but more often than not I am first to die and I consistently am caught unprepared for skill checks. There is absolutely no accessibility for Deaf in this game. Furthermore many perks are audible indicators as well, for example Small Game or Premonition. The few things that make this game easier for people like me are perks like Spine Chill or This Is Not Happening, and that's still not acceptable because there are only four perks, and I'm forced to use at least one for Spine Chill, which prevents me from playing "builds" like more professional players, or building characters for a certain task such as helping my teammates or looping killers. Furthermore certain effects or perks for killer become null and void against players such as I, such as Oblivious or Huntress Lullaby.
It's really not that hard to incorporate deaf accessibility into a game, and I find it deeply disheartening that this game has been out for around four years, and has not made an effort to incorporate accessibility for the deaf and Hard of Hearing. Here is a simple solution for terror radius and skill check.
Skill Check: when the auditory notification begins, a dot at the centre of the screen will grow into a ring, giving players who can't hear the notification a visual indicator that a skill check is coming, and when Huntress Lullaby is used, the ring will simply appear as it does now.
Terror Radius: The Entity creeps around your screen, staying close to the edges as not to obscure too much gameplay vision (this should be forced onto hearing players as well so that they suffer the same loss of visibility) and spider legs or tentacles or something of the like will get closer/larger the closer the killer gets.
If you read this then thank you, even if you don't add in accessibility I'll be happy knowing I tried.
PS: in the menu you should not call it "Hearing Impaired accessibility" because HI is the equivalent of a racial slur for the Deaf community, if you do release it specifically use the term HoH/Deaf please. And if anybody has anything to add to accessibility please do.
Comments
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Actually the mobile version has some features for deaf/hard of hearing accessibility.
iirc it’s a visible heart for the terror radius and also visible cue for skill checks. Probably more. Ever since then I hoped that this would be brought over to the main game.
they just recently started to add accessibility option (colorblind mode and struggle skillcheck based instead of button mashing) and I think they won’t stop there.
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With surv perks that do a sound you can see if its on cooldown.As killer i think would be impossible becuz they would need to add indicator like killer instinct each time a surv is close to hear footsteps and such.I see it pretty hard.
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I think this is a good idea. It would also be cool if they added some deaf accessibility for Killers, but I'm not sure how they'd do this without making it "overpowered". Visual notifications for grunts of pain or moving grass would mess up any attempts at stealth.
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how would stealth killers like ghostface, pig, or mikey work?? and if it was so easy to add hearing impaired settings why haven't they done it yet?
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Add a kind of fortnite-like radial indicator, but also mute the game when this is on so people can't turn it on for a free advantage
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You... look around?
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I agree as long as none deaf people can't gain any advantages from this. For example the visual indication for the killers terror radius can not be any more clear than the sound of the terror radius. Although to be fair the heartbeat is fairly accurate in most cases regarding how close the killer is too you.
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