In this next patch, text chat will be turned to “off” by default in the next chat, while voice chat will be "on’ by default. Since the player is not being presented with an option and it’s just being taken off by default, new players just won’t know text chat exists and won’t go to the options to turn it on even if they didn’t want it disabled. This makes text chat an objectively inferior form of chat where you are much less likely to be heard.
Some people physically aren’t able to speak. Others, especially people with certain physical and mental disabilities, have impeded speech, and don’t use voice chat because of embarrassment, ease of communication, or fear of harassment. And while gaming culture has improved in recent years, members of ethnic, racial, gender, seuxal, age, and other minority groups may also avoid using voice chat to avoid discriminatory treatment. All of these people are now effectively silenced in modern overwatch.
This is a massive overreaction to a few bad apples abusing text chat. And this isn’t even getting into all the other reasons why this is bad from both a gameplay and social perspective. The only upside to this is that having less people in text chat will give the malicious false reporters less ammo to work with, but the solution to that isn’t to disable chat, it’s to fix your moderation so these people aren’t taken equally as seriously to people who report actual bad behavior