In the lead up to Diablo 4, Blizzard have spoken a bit more about what accessibility options will be available for the action RPG.
Recent years have seen accessibility becoming an important feature in gaming. With millions of disabled and impaired players across the globe, companies are aiming to make their products as accessible as possible.
With the next installment in the Diablo franchise arriving this June, Blizzard are the latest to take steps forward with accessibility options.
Diablo 4 Accessibility Options
“The only limitation to adventuring in Sanctuary should be interest, not capability,” says Blizzard’s lead accessibility designer Drew McCrory.
The accessibility features arriving to Diablo 4 were detailed in a recent blog post. Here’s what we can expect.
Dexterity Assistance
This will include button remapping, skill toggle and action wheel activation, the ability to swap left and right sticks and persist target lock.
Button remapping can be customised to suit your requirements. These can be changed for mouse & keyboard as well as console.
The skill toggle and action wheel activation will prevent players from having to hold down buttons.
Swapping left and right sticks allows you to remap your controller in order to control vital buttons with just one hand.
Persist target lock will allow you to lock onto certain targets with both your skills and weapons.
Text Assistance
Diablo 4 will have subtitles enabled by default and these can be customised with font colours, text size and opacity.
Speech-to-text will also be available and will transcribe any text chat in-game.
Vision Assistance
You will be able to resize your cursor and font throughout the game. You can choose between 3 size options (small, medium and large).
In-game gear audio cues will also be a feature which will trigger an audio cue when you hover over items. Additionally, you can choose which rarity items will be triggered. For example, only legendary items will trigger the audio cue.
Player and item highlighting can be enabled to highlight certain players, enemies, objects and NPCs in your selected colour.
Last but not least, Diablo 4 will have a built-in screen reader option supported by JAWS, NVDA and other third-party screen reader software. By enabling this feature, text located on the in-game menus will be read aloud. You can also adjust the volume, speed and voice-type.
Feedback Opportunities
The blog post ends with Blizzard encouraging players to get in touch if they have any other accessibility feedback they wish to suggest. They also promise that “the game will only become more accessible year after year”.
Diablo 4 will launch on June 6 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
