I am a profoundly deaf player, with no hearing in one ear, and requiring a hearing aid in the other. This means I don't have directional hearing. So although I can hear footsteps, doors opening etc. and can roughly guess how far away sounds are, I have no clue in which direction to look.
When I saw in the 5.0 patch notes that the audio visualizer I'd seen on mobile was coming to console & PC, I was very excited to finally level the playing field a bit by augmenting my hearing difficulty with a visual aid (as were my squad of all-deaf friends of varying levels of hearing, who have the same problem). I was concerned about sound effects being disabled but wanted to give it a try.
So on day 1 of season 5 I booted up and switched it on... only within minutes of starting the game to switch it back off again. I hadn't realised the extent to which sound effects were disabled. I can't hear anything and the audio visualizer just plays to my eyes as visual noise, because it's in a whole different context; it doesn't assist my hearing, but apparently intends to replace it.
It's a weird, alienating experience that feels like to me less like an accessibility feature than a full-blown "deaf mode". Perhaps other players whose level of hearing are worse than mine, or even have no hearing at all would appreciate it; but hearing isn't an on/off thing, it's a spectrum. And this is nothing like what I hoped for. I don't want my limitations to be reinforced by having sound completely switched off. My hearing is rubbish, but it's still somewhat useful, and I want to use it!
I have discussed with some of my "hearing" friends who play Fortnite, and they suggest the rationale could be that the audio visualizer had to be nerfed in some way because players who don't need it could use it for an advantage regardless to enhance their directional awareness. To which I respond: so what? It doesn't bother me if a Ninja or Myth wanted to use it, and chances are they wouldn't anyway just because the visualizer is so busy and they seem to manage without. More to the point, I feel deeply disappointed that apparently keeping the game "fair" is more important than providing accessibility tooling without caveat to players that would genuinely benefit most from it, like myself.
As one of my colleagues sardonically put it: "We were so focused on not letting the disabled people beat us that we missed the point in helping them in the first place."
Epic, please enable sound effects when the audio visualizer is enabled, and allow me to experience the game the same way everyone else is able to.
Submitted July 29, 2018 at 10:29PM by anny5ux https://ift.tt/2mR95wQ https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
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