Diablo IV Has Accessibility Options

handicapped parking spot
Image via Jakub Pabis.

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.

Xbox Adds Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech Features

Xbox posted information in its June Xbox Update that focuses on newly added features for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech features can be used in party chat.

At Team Xbox, we believe that gaming should be inclusive, approachable, and accessible to everyone. That includes making it easy for gamers to play and communicate together. Party chat, used by gamers around the world to talk to their friends while playing, now supports converting speech into text and text into speech. Each of these features can be used to help games who are deaf or hard of hearing and/or cannot or choose not to speak.

This is a wonderful decision because it makes gaming more accessible. People who are deaf or hard of hearing will now be able to see what is said in party chat because those words are transcribed into text.

The Speech-to-Text feature, once enabled, will automatically turn all words spoken by the people in a party into text. A transcription will be displayed in an adjustable overlay on top of gameplay.

A person who uses American Sign Language (ASL) as their primary means of communication can enable the Text-to-Speech feature. The text posted will be read by a synthetic voice to the rest of the party. The Xbox June Update says that there are several voices per language that a person can choose from.

The Text-to-Speech feature will also be useful for people who are selective mutes and who do not want to use their voice in social settings. People who are nonverbal can use Text-to-Speech. It can also help autistic people (and other neurodiverse people) who may feel overwhelmed by the sensory experience of a video game and having to try and participate in verbal conversation at the same time.

Another great thing about the Text-to-Speech feature is that it can be used by transgender people who happen to dislike the sound of their voice. The ability to choose a synthetic voice can make gaming with strangers a safer, more comfortable, experience.

The Speech-to-Text feature can be useful for people (like me) who have chronic illnesses that cause exhaustion and/or pain. A person who is having difficulty typing can communicate with their party just by speaking. Pain can affect a person’s voice, so the option of using a synthetic voice could make communicating easier.