A completely blind Diablo 4 player has praised the game’s accessibility features, complimenting the screen reader especially, and recommending it to other low-vision or blind players.
Blizzard’s newest ARPG Diablo 4 has been nothing but a success for the company. With great viewership on streaming platforms and raving critic reviews, it’s no surprise that Diablo 4 is the fastest-selling Blizzard game of all time. Many players have been hopping into Sanctuary, eager to experience the story, dungeons, and multitude of events the game has on offer.
Though as you would expect, Diablo 4 can be a pretty complex game, with plenty of systems, classes, and build diversity spread throughout, it can take a bit of time to settle into the new entry. This can especially be the case for low-vision or blind players, who may require accessibility tools such as screen readers to assist in their gameplay.
Fortunately, Diablo 4 seems to be more than capable of meeting the needs of those with vision impairments. Enough so that it has been praised by a completely blind player on Reddit.
Redditor praises Diablo 4 screen reader feature, gives feedback on accessibility features
Reddit user tj_the_blind_gamer gave praise to Blizzard’s ARPG, stating its screen reader was one of the biggest upsides to Diablo in terms of accessibility.
“I’ve got to say the fact that the screen reader does read almost everything it needs to in terms of gear and statistics as well as skills and even reading locations on a map, this is definitely the biggest upside to Diablo 4 as far as blind accessibility.”
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Whilst the player definitely felt that Diablo 4 did a good job with some of its features, they still outlined some ways in which the screen reader could be improved further.
“Overall the only criticisms I can think of are the screen reader not reading every menu option in some of the crafting areas like the jeweler for example, other than that it reads almost everything we need it to.”
Another potential tool that could help the blind community is a navigation assistant, as Sanctuary’s open world can be rather hard to traverse.
“I know some of the blind community have been asking for a navigation assistant feature, as I would agree that feature would be very much appreciated, seeing as how we have a visual indicator whenever you place a pin on the map why couldn’t we have a sound tied to that trail?”
It’s likely Blizzard will continue to work on Diablo 4 long into the future, meaning we could potentially see even further improvements to its accessibility features sometime soon. Given this game is sure to be around for years to come, with multiple expansions already confirmed, this list of features is sure to expand as well.