i bring this issue here again, because it is necessary to have such option for people like me, who cant read because of visual impairment/Eyesight disabilities.
There was text to speech feature by addon.
´https://www.jocys.com/TTS/´
That addon has not worked for some time. The monitoring software can not monitor the chat channels anymore because they are encrypted now, or so i read.
This feature was extremely important for following chats. Being able to åparticipate fully in RP events and also vital for knowing the quest texts and NPC speech bubles.
The feature NEEDS TO work again.
Either they need to make changes to allow that software/addon to work again or Blizzard needs to implement their own system and add it as a core feature to games accessibility features.
Please help me keep this topic on top so there is at least some hope, that someone who can do something about it can notice it.
Issues regardin small minority like visually impaired players easily get lost in he plethora of more popular issues. Still this is extremely important to players like me and will also help people who are getting old and not being able to read small texts in game anymore.
This is not an issue needing expensive development or expensive voice acting. Making text to speech is easy and cheap these days aand should really be a default feture in games today.
Yep they need to implement this. It’s 2019 if you want to keep your product big you need to have accessibility options for different kinds of disabilites. This also could be used by not only those that have some vision problems but also those that are sometimes too lazy to read.
As for links you can work around using ` symbol in front and after the link:
A friend of mine who is in perfect health and does also like to read said, that the addon with simple synthesized voice, separate for female and male made playing also a bit more immersive. As if the NPC were actually talking. He also noticed many small conversations between many non player characters that he had never even seen before but when TTS software read spoke them, he noticed all these things most players propably miss.
Thanks for the linking tip. I shall try it.
EDIT: Tried to add the link as you instructed. Did not work
You propbably used ’ instead of `. First one is straight up and down and the other is diagonal. You need to use that diagonal one. On most keyboards it should be located under esc key right next to 1 key.
I dont know if the stance of blizz changed on this. But i remember someone making an add on that would make all quests voiced. However in the end the add on got banned because it would require messing with sound files, wich was a big no no, just like cosmetic mods
Id love this, I am mute myself and for the most part I can get by in raids with not speaking and just listening and doing my task but I will say that fights like mekkatorque where absolute hell for me, cause I needed to be prioritized when I was shrunk even if there might have deen someone more important in the robots, simply because typing was lost in the endless chat spam of most addons+just raidboss RP.
I hate Text to speech programs, cause they give me a robotic voice but I use them when I absolutely have to and that fight would have been one of those times.
Voice acting is halfway good compared to text to speech system. While it does not help with following player chatter or RP events, it does help knowing what happens in the stories and why do i collect some stuff for an NPC.
This Jocy aaddon though, does not modify any files. It simply monitors the channels where all the text in NPC bubble, quest texts, gossip window, player chatter and sp pn goes and turns it in to speech. Bery simple to use and it also has options to tweak existing voices or make new ones from originals and so on.
A must have software and addon for someone who has diabetic retinopathy like me and cant see all the small text in the game. UI scaling does not help in this matter and if i have to increase the sizes of these quest things for example with move anything, they would be so big they would not fit in the screen.
I have just one working eye and it has double vision due various reasons that cant be fixed with glasses or medical science.
It helped me greatly when in groups since the thing read those warninfs and info which one can normally just see. Naturally in instances and while playing with a friend use voice, But not all the chat windows can be fit to voice communication and voice also makes game sounds hard to hear because i have to lower the volume of effects to not interfere with peoples voice.
Because i cant see everything that good, i rely quite a bit on sounds in the game to know what to do.
It really helps because it speaks the text someone sends to you It has some issues though. For example my native language is finnish and when that text to speech software reads finnish and trys to speak it as english, it sounds pretty funny. Some emotes also sound funnt like when you /sleep and it speaks the ZZZZZ part, it is aölways a good laugh
That thing also had numerous options to tweak what you want to hear so you could also disable things you did not waant tpo hear.
Would be nice extra yes, but most important is to get the aaddon working again and that requires action from Blizzard. The author can not do anything about the encryption added to channels for some reason of what i do not know.
Those tts softwares come in some different languages though. I think this one i used, had support for more than just english for free.
I just hope they do something about this soon rather than later. I am now in constant neck pain from being nose to screen… Trying to read all those quest texts which is rather hard to say the least. I also had a quest yesterday with legthy chat bubble dialog telling the story about that quest and i just could not keep up and left out of those texts completely.
Quite a heart breaking thread to read…we take our health and ability to play seamlessly, entirely for granted. I’ll continue to bump this until we see some kind of blue response.
Indeed. Especially when we are young. I had exellent eyesight back then. I could play fast paced games like UT or CS with great success. But i should have been taking better care of diabetes and that kicked back 10 years after. I took health as granted and had such strong belief in future medical science that i thought they can fix anything but i was wrong. I wish people today have more wisdom and i believe many do.
WoW has such design in graphics, that it is pretty easy to see stuff even with my visual impairment. Move anything helps to make some thing like minimap and other UI elements bigger and there are good addons that help to see or hear certain signals when a cooldown has expired or some ability has procced. It is very friendly for visual impaired person… At least on my state of visual impairment. That nice text to speech addon and software also made it easy to follow NPC dialogue like the one between Sylvanas and Koltira at the end of Andorhal questline. It also was exellent at reading chat bubbles on RP events and in chat windows… That is when it was in English. My native language Finnish, sounded pretty funny though
I really hope they make it work again. Its really hard to try and read the text as thats what i have to do right now and it takes time and it can only be done with quest texts and other “static” texts. Conversation on chat bubbles are impossible currently and following chat is also almost impossible as chat conversations are prettuy fast paced often.
Anyway. Thanks for supporting. I do hope this keeps up and that Blizzard can give some happy news about this issue.
I relate to this. I do not have visual impairment, but I have mobility issues which I recently found out could be permanent. One of the reasons I love to play Classic WoW is that it does not demand a player to be pressing keybinds and mouseclicks near constantly or in super quick succession. This means I can play for hours on end, whereas with faster paced games I need to take breaks very regularly and cannot play for as long either. There are some games I just cannot play at all, which does upset me sometimes but I can still find joy in other games that suit my disability.
I really hope Blizzard will give this attention, and soon. If you have not yet I suggest you also make a post on reddit about this. The WoW communities there are very large and super active. You could get some support from there as well.
Yea. There are games too that i cant play with my disability like all FPS shooters, which actually loved to play when i still had normal visus on my eyes. Especially old UT (Unreal Tournament GOTY) was my favotite and i also maintained dedicated internet server for that back then. Would be nice to still play with my friends at LAN party with full ability but i just hang there and offer a target for them to shoot now so i am in spirit with them. I also loved fast race games and cant play anymore though GTA is one i just drive blind for fun at times… It gives so much fun trying to drive as fast as i can without crashing (Much and too often)
Thats a good suggestion. Thanks.
I dont have Reddit account yet though, but maybe its time to consider making one.
