Hi.
Right now I’m playing d2r totally blind. At one point tts/screen reader support was on the table. While not expecting an exact date, it would be nice to know if this is still a focus? Honestly it isn’t a fix all, but seriously I can’t describe how nice it would be to be able to read what was on the screen without other tools constantly repeating my hp and mana to me over and over, or how I could go through a shop without needing to pick up every item and drop it to hear what kind of item it is before using OCR to read the stats and decide whether or not I want to keep it, or literally not needing to spam a/x on a controler hoping to find a waypoint, mob, exit, or item. Finally, it’d be nice to play ladder on a vaguely fair playing field with everyone else. Most people probably won’t care about this post, but still figured it would be worth asking what the plans are. Thanks!
Well I care. Blizzard help this guy out.
This thread definitely got me thinking of how difficult it would be to play this (or any) game without the function of sight. A truly sobering reminder.
+1
Surprisingly games like diablo are easier than one thinks to play. I would argue, at least personally, all that is needed is a way to read the screen and a few extra sound cues. D3 was more of the same, honestly.
how do you find foes to attack?
Sounds are good enough that I can usually hear something from far away as well as the general direction it’s in. For context, I’m currently on act 2 with the most trouble I’ve had being the jail because of the constant number of doors. Cough it would have been nice to not have to spam a/x to try to open doors and instead have something read to me when I was approaching a door Blizzard cough.
The directional audio in this game is absolutely SUPERB. It’s one of the things I’ve remarked on many times.
Yes it is.
And people would accuse me of aimbotting in FPS games because of being good at determining direction based on audio. 
A good pair of headphones, a gaming mouse with no mouse acceleration and good audio from the game = win
and here I am playing with sound off, didn’t even notice they added 3D audio to this.
if it was 2001 I would make a joke about that’s how the wife parks (by sound) But you know gotta keep everything current year.
Can you think of a better way to indicate the position of things for folks who can’t see? Would some kind of auditory ping help or the ability to isolate tracks of audio?
Going to be harsh on the ears once you hit act 6 and encounter those whip foes that shoot the loud annoying green stuff. Aiee
It especially helps when a monster can be heard through a wall because even if I can’t figure out how to get to it right away, it gives me an idea of a new direction to move in. I’d say what would most help, other than what this topic is already talking about, is a consistent sound to mark new floors/areas of dungeons. As an example, sometimes the sound for a new floor is a fire, or the sound of the wind blowing from a cave mouth, but it isn’t consistent. I end up spamming A/X on fires because I’m like this is possibly a new floor. It also could just be fire and I’m walking into it oh god regret. Honestly I think the things that require sounds are like interactibles, entrances, unactivated waypoints, etc. Monsters may hit me like once if I’m aiming incorrectly, but I’m usually aware enough to be like oh hey this isn’t exactly to my left and compensate.
Interesting, it definitely helps to understand what you are listening for.
Can you hear footsteps from the monsters or just idle sounds they make? (I don’t know if they have footstep sounds)
this would definitely be a way to help sound designers think more about the ambient sound choices for elements in the game.
one of the bigger “new trends” in game development is accessibility features. This kind of information is extremely helpful.
Depends on the monster, really. Some have footsteps, but basically all make a sound so I know aprox how far they are. Even if they make that sound when idle, I still know they’ve moved closer.
People often ask me why I’m not dying to the mechanics so many others are in raids. WoW supports full surround sound and I use that to determine where something is coming from. Helps tremendously when I’m unable to visually process the onscreen cues in time.
Excellent thread. It is fantastic you took the time to write about your experiences!
I see Tias is typing too and I know he has some thoughts on Accessibility in D2R as well.
If those thoughts are all in one thread I can forward that to our Community Managers.
i agree let’s make it happen!
I would genuinely appreciate that. Like I said I don’t expect this to happen tomorrow, but these changes would be an incredible help.
I am also a blind individual, and i’ve been wondering this same thing. It would make the game so much more useable and less of a… " I hope I accidently run into something!" type of game. I would also like to suggest maybe adding in a slider to raise and lower the volume of interactable items. I.E the sounds cave entrances make, waypoints and shrines. Love the fact that someone mentioned this again. Thank you so much!
How do you play a video game (emphasis on the video part) without being able to see it?
Given the random nature of the maps, I’m curious about this myself, though just because I can’t figure it out that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I’m only one slice of the accessibility spectrum pie.
Having TTS/Screen Reader support would be a major boost to figuring out where you need to go. The devs could put in an option for waypoints, entrances, and exits that would periodically announce their location relative to the player (e.g. “Level 4 entrance at 11 o’clock”. This would tell the player that they are either one room away or the entrance is a good ways off, and would require vertical traversing to reach. And when a player bumps up against a door the game could simply say “closed door” or “open door”.
It would require a fair bit of setup since specific textures would have to be redone to allow for triggers, and it might only be available in resurrected mode (obviously for a blind player graphics are the least of their concern, so not an issue here).
The game could also announce the zone name when a player transitions to a new zone or area, such as “Entering the Tamoe Highlands” or “Descending to the fourth floor”. It could also announce when nearing interactable objects such as “Musty Tome at 3 o’clock” or “Tristram Portal at 7 o’clock”.
For vendors it could work via mouseover and a keybind trigger to activate the TTS feature for the item being hovered over. The player could hold shift and the keybind to trigger both the TTS feature for the item and also for the comparison to their currently equipped item.
Another feature I’ve been mulling over is one that lets us alter the text color of both runes and gems on the ground. It is immensely helpful for runes already, and the choice is somewhat colorblind friendly. But it would give the most accessibility if we had access to either the color wheel or the RGB sliders to customize a color that better suits a player’s individual visual needs. I’m not colorblind, but certain colors appear more easily to me when in my peripheral vision, which would help me greatly as my central vision is always on my character since I have only one eye to work with. Being able to make gems appear as say, bright sky blue for their text would help me both not skip over them accidentally and to more easily see that they are there in the first place.
For the visually impaired, adding in distinct drop sounds for unique and set items, as well as gems and runes would be a much welcomed quality of life enhancement. Path of Exile has these and they are very helpful in avoiding missing out on important items.
People have been asking for a loot filter for a while, but it wouldn’t help just the regular players. For visually impaired players searching for specific types of items, a filter would allow them to filter out the noise while searching for what they’re after. The one thing the developers here would need to do is avoid the pitfall that the Neversink filters have in Path of Exile is to not use things like translucency or text size reduction that the player cannot override. It’s why when I play PoE I use the built in filter, not because it’s better, but because I can at least still see the items. I have trouble reading the nameplates with text size reductions, but at least they aren’t made virtually invisible like Neversink does. Sadly I’ve been “told” many times over there that if I want an accessibility friendly version of the Neversink filters I’ll have to make them myself. Seems the authors and many of the Path of Exile developers don’t care a whit about accessibility.
One last feature that I can think of right now is the ability to change between cardinal directions, up/upper right/right (etc.), and clock notations for announcing where something is relative to the character onscreen. That way players who may not have the ability to translate one method on the fly can use a method that is more direct and requires no translation for them (e.g. someone might have trouble with 2 o’clock but be better off with either “northeast” or “upper right”. Options come in handy.
I will also say I have friends who want to buy the game but aren’t as patient when it comes to reading the screen the way I do. They obviously can’t comment because they don’t own the game. I like all of these suggestions. Another thing I’ve considered is a list of coordinates that we may be able to get to via key press that gives us an idea of where things are? I don’t much like that idea though because I’m worried it would take away some of the exploration aspect. I want enough help to tell me what’s going on without being hand holdy. Different sounds for different rune drops and gems would be nice, and your thoughts on something that periotically announces things when we’re closish to them seems like a solid compromise between wandering around and exact directions. Also to answer your question it’s mostly just wandering around with maps, honestly. Reading stuff I use OCR with a screen reader via a capture card which is… not exactly my favorite way but the only way I can read any text.