subtitles for people with hearing loss

[BunnyKate]

I think it would be very good if the game added the ability to include subtitles. so that the subtitles indicate the main things: rain, falling blocks (earth, sand, gravel or a cave collapse), sounds of drifters and all animals, and much more. my husband is hearing impaired. he is deaf and very often problems arise in games because he does not hear approaching danger. headphones with vibration feedback do not respond to simple atmospheric sounds. I really miss this button in the settings. Thank you

[tickfleato]

PLEASE oh my god this game really needs more accessibility features and subtitles are at the top of my list! I'm not HoH but I generally just like to have subtitles on all the time due to auditory processing issues, and should be a basic feature of games at this point imo.

[Thorfinn]

Been thinking about this for a while. How would it work? At any given time, there are multiple sound effects playing. If you were to implement something like Buzzwords, but for all sounds, it would often take up half the screen or more. There must be something that would work, but I haven't thought of anything yet.

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

How would it work?

Copy/paste from my comment in a different thread:

Using Minecraft as an example(although it's been a while since I played with the subtitles on), the subtitles indicate the sound type, the sound's intensity, and sometimes include a small arrow to roughly indicate where the sound is coming from(at least, right or left). They're also confined to a small scrolling list in the corner of the screen and fade after a few seconds, so they're not particularly intrusive.

That's pretty much what I would expect. A small text box opposite the chat window(or wherever the player chose to put it) that contains very brief descriptions of various sounds nearby, as well as maybe an arrow with the text to indicate which direction, if important, the sound is coming from(like footsteps, entity noise). The text only needs to be displayed for a few seconds, and unlike the chat box text, doesn't need to be saved.

[FlareUKCS]

Could also use icons, with an arrow indicating direction if applicable just above the usual help text above the HP / Food bar... eyes naturally go there so it wouldn't be out the way imo.

[Thorfinn]

If you want to get some idea of how many sounds are layered together at any given time, take a gander at Apache's Accessibility Tweaks. There may be a dozen going at any given time. A small scrolling text box is not enough, unless you get rid of the ambients and subtitle only the "important" sounds. Which is the opposite situation to the one you posted that reply in, where the OP wants more sounds layered in.

[BunnyKate]

I'm very glad that my question attracted attention! it's nice. unfortunately I don't know how it works and I understand that there are a lot of sounds in the game. I play Minecraft a lot and always use subtitles. Sometimes a very large list of sounds accumulates there, but this does not interfere with playing at all. Maybe there is no need to include absolutely all sounds in the subtitles? for example, the “rustle of grass” is not so important. these are just my thoughts))) thanks for your attention

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

A small scrolling text box is not enough, unless you get rid of the ambients and subtitle only the "important" sounds.

 

3 hours ago, BunnyKate said:

Sometimes a very large list of sounds accumulates there, but this does not interfere with playing at all. Maybe there is no need to include absolutely all sounds in the subtitles? for example, the “rustle of grass” is not so important. these are just my thoughts))) thanks for your attention

That's the fix I would figure, if there were too many sounds to effectively fit in a scrolling text box. I think you could probably still include minor ambient noises like "birds chirping" or "grass rustles softly", but give them low priority flags so they're omitted when higher priority effects are present(like drifters, bears, or beehives--things more critical to the player's attention). Footsteps could fit into "light", "medium", "heavy", or "humanoid" categories, with a "menacing" prefix to indicate something potentially dangerous and/or "metallic" to indicate a robot of some sort.

Or if it's too much hassle, just leave out the most insignificant sounds and only subtitle the effects critical to gameplay.

[Thorfinn]

That could work, @LadyWYT. Might be a thing to bounce off Apache rather than reinventing the wheel. Text notifications every second? The most "important" sound of the last second gets  reported? It will be a problem with multiple foes. More than one drifter or wolf and you will just get notified of one?

Maybe the loudest sound effect gets reported? That's kind of close to everyone else's game experience. It's not  fair to the hearing impaired, being denied any of the more subtle cues, but nothing really is.

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Text notifications every second? The most "important" sound of the last second gets  reported? It will be a problem with multiple foes. More than one drifter or wolf and you will just get notified of one?

If there are more than one of a particular entity in the area, you might be able to change the description slightly. For example: "chicken clucks" versus "chickens cluck". Other descriptions, such as "ominous footsteps", can indicate either a single entity, or multiple entities.

13 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe the loudest sound effect gets reported? That's kind of close to everyone else's game experience. It's not  fair to the hearing impaired, being denied any of the more subtle cues, but nothing really is.

The loudest sounds should take priority, yes, given that those are going to be the most noticeable. There might be some details that don't translate well to subtitles, so the experience for the hearing impaired will differ a bit from the average player. However, while the main goal is to provide equivalent experiences for both sets of players, I think more priority should be placed on making sure the core gameplay is solid in spite of potential player handicaps. A handicapped player might miss some immersive detail here and there, but they won't miss out on the gameplay itself.