Diablo IV is the newest of the series of Diablo games created by Blizzard Entertainment – one of three companies that was recently acquired by Microsoft. Some players will jump right into Diablo IV without needing to use the many accessibility options the game offers.
That said, some of us need to use some of these accessibility options. Here is a list of what you can choose to use that will help make Diablo IV adapt to your personal disabilities.
Font Scale: Choose from small, medium, or large (with the default set on large).
Brightness: There is a button called “Calibrate Brightness” that you can use to make it easier for you to see things in the game – and could be helpful for spotting enemies or getting out of the way of thrown weapons.
Color Blind Filter: There are three options:
- Protanopia – Difficulty distinguishing red light from green light
- Deuternopia – Difficulty distinguishing green light from red light
- Tritanopia – Difficulty distinguishing blue light from green light and green light from yellow light
Screen Shake Effects: The default is “show screen shake events on certain skills”. You can un-toggle that if (what I call “shaky cam”) makes you feel ill.
Combat Hit Flash: This will enable hit flashes while hitting a monster or a player during combat. You can toggle that off, too. It is my understanding that flashing or strobing lights can cause harm to people who have epilepsy.
Reduce Strobing: This will disable several effects and lights in the game reducing the amount of strobing in the game.
Do you have a family member who has epilepsy? Flashing or strobing lights could cause them to have a seizure. This is also something to think about if you intend to put your Diablo IV gameplay on YouTube (for example). Those flashing or strobing lights can harm people who have epilepsy.
Highlight Player: The Highlight Player feature is a good one because it makes it super easy to figure out where your character is on the screen. Personally, I’ve been using a green color that outlines my character. There are other color options as well.
Controller Vibration: Enable controller vibration – effects on certain skills and abilities.
I play Diablo IV on my Xbox. One of the things I hate about playing on a console is when the controller starts to vibrate.
Why does this bother me so much?
I have a neurological disease called fibromyalgia which has no cure. The disease can inflict pain on various parts of my body without warning. As such, I make sure that my controller is not going to vibrate while I’m playing. There is a setting you can use to turn off the vibration.
Screen Reader: The screen reader can help people who are visually impaired, legally blind, or blind to know what the characters are saying in Diablo IV. In my experience, I’ve noticed that some of the dialogue is NOT read out by a screen reader. Most of it is read out loud, though.
The Screen Reader allows players to skip a line in the diaglogue. In my opinion, this can be really helpful if you are stuck on a quest that has a lot of talking. It also helps if you failed to complete that quest and just want to skim through the dialogue.
The Screen Reader feature enables players to have the game describe text and interactive elements of the current screen. If I remember correctly, there are several languages you can choose from for your Screen Reader to read to you.
While there are plenty of other features that a player can enable – or disable – in Diablo IV, I feel that the ones I’ve mentioned here are likely to be the most helpful for players who have disabilities. The accessibility options in this game make it more possible for me to have a physically comfortable way to play Diablo IV.