Hello!
I wasn’t really sure where to ask this question regarding accessibility since this isn’t really a technical issue per-say but more of a request to the Overwatch devs(?)
I’m not sure whether this could somehow be passed onto the Team 4 devs/Gavin Winter but all good if that isn’t possible, I just wanted to try all avenues!
Question: Are there any future plans to implement accessibility for blind players of Overwatch so they can find their way through the menu(s) UI using text to speech?
I’m asking this question as a little while ago I got a completely blind friend to join me to play Quickplay in Overwatch 2 (I played LifeWeaver and he played Torbjörn!)
In the games we played he had a lot of fun (especially with the Mischief and Magic game mode that was around at the time) but he was also very conscious of the fact of how much work it took to help him navigate around the map as a completely new player who has 100% vision loss. (The ping system was actually a lot more effective as a directional tool than I would have thought!)
Inspired by this and the fun he had/his want to play more but not “feel like he was burdening me” I have in the last week commissioned another friend to help build an accessibility friendly custom game in the workshop which has a lot of features to help navigate the game as a blind player whilst still retaining player agency. My hope being that he could have a better experience and be able to join in on team fights more/get around the map more easily)
It won’t be perfect as the workshop is limited in some aspects but we are hoping to implement a lot of features that will make the game playable, not just for my friend, but the wider blind community! (The accessibility mode is togglable too so fully sighted players can turn it off so they can play with their blind friends!)
Since Overwatch 2 is free to play and is cross platform makes it super accessible already - but the fact you only need a short alphanumeric code to load up a custom game and said game can be distributed widely so more people can play/be inspired to create their own accessibility mode is really cool! ( though the one we’re making is still early in the works)
With that being said, the issue is being able to give the blind/partially sighted players the independence to be able to create their own lobbies so they can play together in PUGs (casual scrims) without having to rely on friends or family to be their eyes.
Independence is so important and although there are work arounds for PC (NVDA + Golden Cursor) these unfortunately rely on screen resolution so they can plot the coordinates of each menu selection and for blind console players on Xbox, PS, Switch, Steam deck etc there isn’t a universal solution currently as far as I know.
TTS is already implemented into an aspect of the game (text chat) and it would be super cool if this could be added to read the menu selection and player names in custom lobbies etc. (imagining Athena’s voice actor reading the menu would be so neat!)
A few of the blind players in the discord blind gamers community my friend added me to have Xbox’s that are very accessibility friendly too for their menus apparently so perhaps Microsoft could be persuaded? A lot of blind Blizzard players also play Hearthstone too so there is a precedent for Blizzard too?
All in all my only goal here is to try and be a voice for my friend and the wider blind/ partially sighted community. I have been on a great learning curve to try and better understand the struggles they face in trying to thrive in online gaming and ways we could be more inclusive towards them as a gaming community.
The community in OW custom games sometimes gets a bad rap but the creativity to push boundaries to recreate and redefine Overwatch has always stood out to me and many others.
If this did get added my hope would be more workshop creators could make more accessible game modes in time that the blind and partially sighted community could enjoy and integrate them as Overwatch players!
🩷