As person with disabiliy with vision, these text to speech functions are essential. Like the Windows text to speech system, it allows me and other like me to hear the text in various thing as a speech, thus allowing me to fully use the software to its full potential.
Warcraft actually had text to speech functionality from addon and software from Jocy_com that worked perfectly, but some of the patches aplied this year made that addon not to work, because the text channels are now encrypted, thus unable to monitor them for turning them to speech with the monitor software.
While this is good to players security and privacy, it is not good for people relying to text to speech functionality.
Either they need to add their own feature quite fast, or make it possible for the addon/software to at least monitor the NPC dialogue, quest texts and other similar stuff.
Better yet, they should add this functionality as a built in feature. Text to speech systems are extremely easy and cheap to make these days, especially for a team of skilled coders working at Blizzard, so please give us blind people the possibility to enjoy the game to its full potential. Especially for people like me who are story driven players, these functions that allow me to hear what quests are all about and what NPC folks say is extremely important.
Blind in my case is having diabetic retinopathy which has destroyed my retina in a way, that other eye is blind and other can just see the environment and allows me to play, but makes text blurred in a way that it is impossible to read without great difficulty. Try keeping your nose to the screen with double eyeglasses so that you can read at least very slowly. Not good i can tell you. Destroys your back at least and makes constant neck pain.
I think it is something of an oversight and side effect from crypting the text channels, or so i heard. I can understand the need to protect player privacy, but not NPC messages, quest texts and such… Then again if these messages use the same channels or the crypting is not channel based but for all the channels, it makes sense why it does not work.
Im just really frustrated with this issue. Couple years back, i opened a thread about built in text to speech an d there someone linked me to that addon which has been working perfectly until now. I was very glad to finally get back to game and actually know what the quests are all about and what NPC around me are saying. That addon also worked for player chat, so following discussions in game was again possible.
Very sad it does not work anymore. If they dont want to create this as a built in feature, perphaps they could co-operate a bit with the developer od said addon to make it work. It would really be a big thing to have the feature for people like me.
In case you folks are interested. Google text to speech monitor and WOW addon and it should be on top jocy_com where _ is actually . but i cant post links it seems so i made it that way.
I completely agree that they should have a text to speech setting in game.
Blizzard ought to look into it as the WoW players are all becoming rather aged these days (classic players currently maybe not so much , Twitch crowd) and Diabetes has increased , the most common side effect is losing their sight .
Blizzard should at least reach out to the add on maker maybe some of their code could assist.
I agree with this post. Either makea feature like this or allow addons to fiddle with chat messages again. Get it in as fast as possible - there’s a built-in WIndows feature that does it for pete’s sake, and macOS has one, too! There is no reason not to have this.
Offtopic:
And actually we have text-to-speech AI that’s so strong today that, while it won’t replace actual voice-acting at all, could actually be used to make our characters talk when we write a message in /s if it is enabled. That’d be pretty cool wouldn’t it?
Yea. I lost my vision due diabetes and there are quite many who have the same issue due diabetes or something else. Most of us can still play very effectively, but the texts are something that in game, i just cant see.
UI scaling and addon like moveanything help in some places but not with text.
Well whatever the reason I hope they fix this soon. As you say there’s no need to encrypt what NPCs are saying. And if an addon allows you play the game despite your reduced eyesight, the addon should be enabled or even better added as a core feature as you said.
You can post links by the way, if you use the icon that looks like this </> when you’re creating a post.
I realize it might be very difficult for you to see that icon though.
It’s the sixth icon from the left along the top row when you’re writing a new post or comment.
It allows you to create a link like this
www.example.com
It won’t be a direct link but it’ll be easier for someone to just copy-paste the link into their browser.
I have a facebook friend who is 45 several years older than me and he is an avid reader “tries to be” he can’t read paper books anymore and uses the kindle but now he is beginning to struggle there so I’ve been trying to convert him to audible he’s a bit stubborn.
the average player these days are usually in their 30’s so 45 isn’t really that far off if any are dealing with diabetes as time flies so quickly .
I can understand your friend reluctant attitude against audible books.
I loved to read quite a bit… I had a book almost everyday and i had my “Annual” books like Lord of the ring that i often re-reead. I loved the feel and smell of real books and even while i sometimes read digital books, they are not the same thing and i cant even read them anymore. I have Hobbit waiting for listening now. I got it as xmas present from my dad Just have to start some day now… At least it as the story even while its not the same as real book
I am 43 myself by the way.
Thanks for pointing out that icon. I did not even look for it actually, because the error while trying to just post a link says something like “You cant post links” so i just thought they are completely out of the question now…
It still says i cant post links though. Maybe i have too few posts on the new forums or something…
That icon only allows you to post the link as pure text, no direct link. It’s just there so you won’t have to remove portions of the link-text in order to write it down here.
Posting direct links is reserved for very active members of the forums. The so-called “trust levels”.
That was nice of him .
Slight tip get a really nice pair of head phones to listen to them on the go bus/train journeys.
Also when you bite the bullet and take a couple of hours to start listening to The Hobbit and eventually convert over make sure you do Audible subscription for ÂŁ7.99 a month you get a free book (each month) to keep permanently as it saves you a lot of money as some of the many hour books hit 60ÂŁ so you save 52 + ÂŁ .
rather than buy before the storm prior to BFA release I got the audible version which the voice actor of Anduin was the Narrator he does a good goblin voice listened to it at my desk job
Here in Finland, we actuallt got quite good collection of audio and digital b9ooks on libraries. The selection differs on areas, but it still is quite good. Im planning to get all the Harry Potters one day as my own though. The movies are good substitute but they dont have it all.
Anyways going a bit off topic but it nice to discuss these things
By the way, I think the reason they did this was to shut down the LFG addon. Truly sad. Instead of removing parsing they should’ve removed the ability to send so much information through channels. I don’t get this approach they’ve taken, it strikes me as pretty stupid.
maybe there is a phone app that lets you convert a photo or image into text. Then you can convert the text into speech by pasting it on translate google and pressing the speak button. Surely there has to be something like that right? With all these amazing intelligent photo apps nowadays.
There are many great apps and devices to help people with disabilities, however the amount of stuff going on in ga,me like WOW makes it impossible to use these. Even the quest text reader by Curbis needs pasting links from game to browser over and over again and its just for quests. Copy/pasting and using web apps is also cumbersome for people that cant see text unless its spoken or big enough.
There was text to speech functionality in the game via this addon and software and it was made broken by encrypting channels or whatever they did. It was easy to use, just run the monitor, run the game and play as normal people exept all the text you wanted to see was spoken so you can hear it when one cant see text.
So much content in stories, quests, chat windows… All these were possible to know like any normal people because that addon and monitor software turned basically every text in the game to speech.
They really should co-operate with Jocy’s com to make it work again or heck… Buy rights to that software and make it core functionality to accessibility options.
Just have to start some day now… At least it as the story even while its not the same as real book 
