The Best Accessible Games For Deaf And HoH Gamers

Here at EIP Gaming we believe that everything is permitted and gaming is for everyone. For some people, all they need to play their favorite games is a controller. Other people need guides and tips. And still other people need accessibility tools to help them game while living with a disability.

In this article, we’re going to look at some games that provide accessibility tools for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. These games make an effort to actively provide accessibility features. As ever, not every game will be accessible to every disabled person. Some of these games are more accessible than others — one in particular tried something new but dropped the ball on implementation — but all of them try to do something to welcome the deaf community.

Metacritic doesn’t rate games on accessibility, so we’ve had to find another source for our game reviews: the inimitable CanIPlayThat. CanIPlayThat’s reviewers rate games for D/deaf, mobility, cognitive, and visual accessibility. This article wouldn’t have been possible without their hard work and research.

What Makes Games Accessible For Deaf Gamers?

There are plenty of games that are fully or partly accessible to deaf gamers: racing games, visual novels, DOS games, and pre-SNES retro games all tend to be playable without sound, right out of the box. But you can make a game designed with heavy audio elements playable for people who can’t hear them — you just have to be mindful of what information you’re conveying, and provide another way to access that information.

Professors at the Complutense University of Madrid spoke to deaf gamers about what accessibility aids they needed to play video games. They came up with a list:

• Deaf gamers need subtitles for any dialogue in game. Ideally, the player should be able to customize the subtitles’ look and feel. You need different options for subtitle size and color; they should also be able to design if and how the subtitles stand out from the background. Some gamers who need subtitles prefer them to have a thick outline; others prefer a transparent, dark background between the words and the game.
• Deaf gamers need captions for any sound that conveys information. This goes beyond subtitles for cutscenes, party banter, and other “story” content. It covers everything from ambient dialogue to monster noises to footsteps. Any sound that’s important to gameplay needs to be captioned to make sure players don’t miss it; ambient and inconsequential sounds, while not crucial, help immerse the player in a game’s world.
• Deaf gamers need sound visualization — some way to track where sounds are coming from. Especially in a game where people are shooting at you, you need to be able to track what a sound is, where it’s coming from, and how fast it’s moving. You can do these sound “visualizations” many different ways, from drawing something on the screen to making the controller rumble-but you need to share this information with the player in a way they can parse.

With this in mind, let’s get to the games!

Fortnite

Fortnite needs no introduction. The battle royale game that hung on past the battle royale fad, the game that has spawned dances and memes like no other, is one of the most popular games on the market. But it’s also the rare accessible battle royale for deaf and HoH players. According to CanIPlayThat, Fortnite is “pretty much perfect in terms of deaf accessibility”.

Open world shooters in general, and battle royale games in particular, can be difficult to play if you have a hearing disability. Many battle royale games use audio cues to alert you to other players. If you can’t hear when someone’s shooting at you, and there’s no visual cue for gunfire, you’re going to die the second someone gets the drop on you. So if a battle royale game is going to try and be accessible for everyone, you’ve got to make it so that everyone can get the same cues- regardless of whether or not you can hear them. Fortnite has a toggle called “visualize sound effects”. Symbols appear on the screen every time someone makes a sound in-game. On top of that, every gunshot has a bullet tracer, chat options are accessible, and all story content in Save the World mode is properly subtitled.

Overall, Fortnite puts deaf and hearing players on the same playing field. In a competitive game, that’s a rare gift.

Fortnite’s audio accessibility features include:

• Detailed sound visualization mode, with different symbols for gunfire, footsteps, and treasure chests
• Voice and text chat, even on console
• Ping commands that let you request help, point out enemies, or coordinate formations
• Subtitles with size/colour/background opacity options
• Quest information clearly displayed on screen

The Last of Us Part II

In The Last of Us Part II, you play as a girl named Ellie traversing a post-apocalyptic Washington State. You’re fighting off cordyceps-infected zombie clickers, Seraphite cultists, and members of a murderous militia, while pursuing a quest for revenge against the woman who killed your father figure. It’s a tense game, with as much stealth as fighting.

If Fortnite is the state of the art for multiplayer deaf accessibility, The Last Of Us Part II is the state of the art for single-player deaf accessibility. Pretty much anyone can pick up this game and enjoy it, in all its grim glory. Before you see anything in game — before you see a single cutscene or gameplay sequence — you’re given the option to turn on whatever accessibility tools you need. TLOU features some of the best subtitles and closed captions in gaming, as well as a suite of gameplay options that let you notice enemies without having to hear them. The game provides an “Enhanced Listen Mode”: by pressing a button, you can see enemies outlined by a glow, and some information about where they are.

There’s one fly in the ointment: Listen Mode is part of the skill tree. Until you unlock a perk, the outlines are blobby and hard to parse, and don’t tell you whether the enemy is a human or a clicker. Once you’ve unlocked the perk, the outlines in Listen Mode become clear. For some people, that might be a dealbreaker; for others, it might feel like progression. The Last Of Us Part II still sets the standard for accessibility in single-player video games. The title’s high level of customization means that you can get the accessibility options you need when you need them — and turn them off when you don’t.

The Last Of Us Part II’s audio accessibility options include:

• Accessibility menu on launch, with a comprehensive suite of options for multiple kinds of disability
• Subtitles for all dialogue, including ambient dialogue
• Subtitle display options that include size, color, background opacity, and distinct colors for names
• Vibration cues for combat and guitar playing
• “Enhanced listen mode” that outlines enemies with a glow and tells you their position
• Visual prompts for dodge timing and enemy positioning

Watch Dogs: Legion

Watch Dogs: Legion is a third person Ubisoft open-world action game, with a cyberpunk aesthetic. You’re playing as a hacker collective trying to free London from the control of a private military company and clear your name. The game’s primary gimmick that you can recruit every character you meet: any of the thousands of NPCs in the world can become your player character.

And just as you can choose to recruit and play as any of the characters in WDL’s futuristic London, anyone who wants to can play this game. The closed captioning mode is one of its standout accessibility features — it captions all sounds, even ambient ones like birdsong. Deaf and HoH players can immerse themselves into the world without missing any part of the experience.

The gameplay’s been calibrated for accessibility, too, with all the sound visualization you’d expect from an accessible game: enemy direction indicators, directional damage indicators, and enemy health indicators are all prominently displayed. You’re not going to miss anything because you can’t hear. Ubisoft’s one of the industry leaders in accessible gaming, and Watch Dogs: Legion continues that trend, with accessibility options that all games should aspire to match.

Watch Dogs: Legion’s audio accessibility features include:

• Customizable subtitles, with size/background/color options
• Closed captioning for all sounds, including ambient sounds
• Directional indicators for sounds with positioning arrows
• Enemy health indicators, direction indicators, bullet trails

Moss

In Moss, you play as the Reader of a lavishly designed living picture book, guiding a cute mouse named Quill through beautiful worlds on a quest to save her uncle. Through VR motion controls, you help Quill solve puzzles, keep an eye out for secret areas, heal her, and generally assist her. When the game does combat, it switches to third person mode, but combat is a limited part of the game — for most of it, you’ll be assisting Quill in first-person VR. You can stand, sit, and kneel to get a better view of the world, move objects within it, and even reach down and pet Quill.

The main draw of Moss for deaf gamers is that Quill uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. Quill can’t speak; she can only squeak. So she uses ASL and pantomime to communicate with the player. The sign language lets you know how Quill’s feeling, makes her feel like her own person, and helps give you hints about the puzzles. But it isn’t perfect. Quill’s sign language is not subtitled or translated at all, so if you don’t understand ASL, you’ll miss what she’s saying. Sometimes the small movements can be hard to see, especially if you’re not standing close to Quill. And in a VR game like this, you’ll often not be too close to Quill.

Every bit of dialogue is subtitled — and, as this is an interactive picture book, there’s a lot of dialogue — but there are no closed captioning options. All important information is conveyed, but little details that add extra immersion get lost in the shuffle. Moss is an incredibly immersive and beautiful game. It shows off the power of VR in a way all gamers can appreciate, whether or not they can hear. That being said, the devs dropped the ball on captioning, and Quill’s sign language isn’t an integral part of the game. It’s not a gimmick, exactly, but it’s not as accessible as it could be. It’s imperfect, but Moss deserves praise for trying.

Moss’s accessibility audio features include:

• A cute protagonist who uses ASL to communicate
• Subtitles that accurately convey dialogue and are readable across a room
• Visual indicators that make gameplay easier

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Did you like the Creature stage in Spore, but wanted it to be more ‘realistic’ and grounded? Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is the game for you. You play as a tribe of primates in Africa. You explore your world, expand your tribe’s territory, and evolve into something resembling humans. It’s ultimately a survival game, and a fairly unforgiving one — being a small mammal in the Stone Age is not fun. A survival game where you have to rely on your senses is not usually deaf friendly — especially not a game where you’re expected to learn by dying. For most games in this genre, you’d just have to accept that the game’s not accessible and move on.

But Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey gets around this limitation by having a really cool sound visualization system. When you press a button, you can see what sounds are around you and approximately where they’re coming from. You see vibrating yellow circles for ‘normal’ sounds. The more opaque the circle, the closer the sound is. But the true genius of this game is that the game distinguishes between normal ambient noise and the noises a predator makes. When you hear a sound that could be dangerous, the game overlays scary animal faces instead of the yellow circles, like so:

Absolutely terrifying, right? It gives you the information you need to play the game, but keeps the mood of fear and surprise the devs are trying to convey. A lot of discussions of accessibility in gaming center around the developers’ “artistic vision”, and how making games more accessible ruins that vision. But Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey proves that games can make their accessibility features an important part of that artistic vision.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey’s accessibility features include:

• Sound visualization options that keep the intended challenge while making the game accessible for deaf/HoH players
• Individual and configurable volume sliders
• A very visual and Deaf-friendly experience overall

Gears 5

Gears 5 is a third-person shooter, the continuation of the massively popular Gears of War series. You play as Kait Diaz, a soldier who’s been having horrible nightmares. In the main story, you explore your way across an open world, digging into dark secrets from humanity’s past and the origins of the Locust Horde that threatened humanity generations ago; in the various mutiplayer modes, you face other players in a deathmatch or play King of the Hill. If you’ve played a Gears of War game, you know what to expect here.

The Coalition clearly put a lot of thought into Gears 5’s accessibility, to the point where even the smallest details feel right. This is another game with an accessibility menu that cuts in before the game begins, and another game with excellent captioning. The devs didn’t decide that any piece of information conveyed through sound was too small to share in text. One really good example: how many times have you played a game where the music changes to tell you whether you’re in and out of combat? Gears 5 tells you when the music cuts out in the subtitles, so you don’t have to miss that gameplay cue. Couple that with all the other state-of-the-art accessibility features, and you’ve got a game that is as friendly to deaf and HoH players as it is to hearing ones.

Gears 5’s audio accessibility features include:

• Accessibility menu turns on before any kind of gameplay/cutscene, so disabled gamers don’t have to miss important information
• Subtitles and text size are configurable before the game begins
• Subtitles tell you who’s speaking to you, if they’re on the radio or if their speech is distorted, and if they’re making non-speaking noises
• MUSIC ENDS subtitles so you can tell when you’re out of combat
• Sound visualization like damage indicators and bullet tracers
• Multiplayer chat has text to speech/speech to text options

Fran Bow

The team behind Fran Bow describes it as “a journey through the mind of a special girl”. And Fran is a special girl indeed. After witnessing the grisly murder of her parents, Fran struggles with anxiety, depression, and hallucination-like visions of a horrifying creature called Remor. She’s sent to the Oswald Asylum– a grim institution for mentally ill children– and given a drug called Duotine that gives her even more nightmarish hallucinations. Fran resolves to escape and find her cat; along the way, she travels through vivid and darkly whimsical fantasy lands and confronts her parents’ killer. If you like Alice: Madness Returns, but want to see a story that’s a bit more original, Fran Bow will be right up your alley.

Honestly, Fran Bow is in here as a representative of its genre — there are plenty of indie adventure games that are completely playable without sound cues. Fran Bow is completely accessible for a player who can’t hear. None of the puzzles require you to listen to anything, and all dialogue is conveyed through easily-legible subtitles. Moreover, the game tackles difficult topics in a nuanced and sensitive way. It’s a grim little game — mental health/schizophrenia, sexual assault, and institutionalization are all major parts of the plot. But the team’s lead writer dealt with some of these issues, and described the process of making the game as ‘therapeutic’. Fran Bow is thus a genuinely heartfelt and compelling experience that many disabled people will be able to relate to — with the added bonus of being accessible for people who can’t hear.

Fran Bow’s audio accessibility features include:

• No voice acting. All dialogue is conveyed through subtitles.
• Subtitles are large, clear, and easy to read.
• Covers topics — such as institutionalization and depression — that many disabled people can relate to.

Blair Witch

What do you think of when you think of Blair Witch? Found footage? Creepy twig dolls? Deaf accessibility? Well, probably not that last one, but the 2019 game Blair Witch is a rare accessible survival horror game for deaf and HoH players. In this game, you play as a former police officer named Ellis Lynch who’s struggling with PTSD. Ellis, and his therapy dog Bullet, join a search party looking for a lost young boy. But when he stumbles over a camcorder that can manipulate space and time, he realizes that the boy’s disappearance isn’t just a lost kid; the things going on in the woods are connected to other disappearances. With the help of Bullet, you investigate the woods and figure out what’s really going on. Your relationship with your dog is an important game mechanic: Bullet helps you find certain objects, barks when monsters are close by, and helps you keep your fragile mental health together.

Blair Witch is that rarest of things — a first-person horror game that can scare the player without relying on sound cues or jumpscares. The game does use sound design to enhance the experience, and it’s been praised for it- but the game is still tense and exciting without any sound at all. More than anything, the game uses the environment, your crappy flashlight, and your fear of the unknown to scare you. If the flashlight glitches, and suddenly you’re left in the dark? If you realize you’ve been going in a circle, not a straight line, because the forest is dark and hard to navigate? If you black out, and wake up in an unfamiliar location, with no idea where you are? You’re going to be, if nothing else, a bit on edge. Add a strong slate of subtitle options- though the game’s stylized font might be difficult for some players to read- and detailed sound visualization, and the game’s story and mechanics come through regardless of whether or not you can hear.

Since this is an accessibility review, I need to flag that this is another game that tackles heavy topics — specifically, childhood trauma and PTSD. While some reviewers found Blair Witch’s handling of these subjects to be clever, sensitive, and narratively satisfying, the game definitely leans on the “Veteran With PTSD That Makes Him Dangerous” trope. If you’re living with PTSD and you find that trope offensive, this probably isn’t the game for you.

But even with these accessibility wrinkles, if you’re looking for a deaf/HoH accessible horror game, it’s hard to beat Blair Witch. You get all of the tension and fear the creators intended, with none of the cheap deaths you get in horror games that expect you to navigate with sound cues. Add a cute dog and the ability to play Snake on your in-game phone, and really, what more can you ask for?

Blair Witch’s audio accessibility features include:

• Customizable subtitles, including customizable size, color options, text colors for different characters, and background opacity
• Sound visualization for all important sounds, including your dog’s barks
• Fear that doesn’t rely on sound cues, including flashlight glitches and disorienting environments

Pharaoh: A New Era

We covered this game when it released, so if you want a more in-depth take, check out our review. Long story short, Pharaoh: A New Era is a very good reimagining of a classic city builder, reworking its presentation to help ease newcomers in without compromising on its hard-as-nails difficulty. It’s not quite like any city builder you’ll ever played — the scale, mechanics, and strategy are all very different when you’re building for a city of pedestrians rather than a city of vehicles.

And yet, it’s like most city builders one can play, because it’s extremely deaf and HoH-friendly. Many city builders are easy to play without sound, because the genre is built around visual representations of complicated information. City builders use map overlays, hovering icons, and color changes to get your attention — not sound. We could have picked any number of city builders for this list — Frostpunk is another game that CanIPlayThat specifically praised — but chose to cover Pharaoh because it’s a recent game that does one thing in particular right. Every cinematic is subtitled, and while you can’t change the format of the subtitles, they’re rare enough that you won’t miss anything if you can’t see. There’s a lot of small text in this game in general, but for a PC strategy title, that’s to be expected.

The thing that Pharaoh, in particular, does right is that any gameplay information that comes as an audio cue also comes as a text box. When you click on a citizen of your city, they say something to tell you about how the city is doing. Is there enough food? Are there enough houses and jobs? Can your recruiters find workers? Your citizens will literally tell you — and every time they do, a pop-up window appears on screen, showing you the full text of what they said and a picture of what kind of citizen they are. It’s a little touch, but it’s little touches like these that make a game more welcoming to its disabled audience.

Pharaoh: A New Era’s audio accessibility features include:

• Full subtitles on cinematics, character barks, and other spoken text
• All information conveyed with an audio cue also has a visual cue
• Almost all information in this game is conveyed visually, with audio for spice

Minecraft: Java Edition

If you’re reading this, we probably don’t need to explain what Minecraft is. The famous voxel-based sandbox lets you explore and reshape the world to your heart’s content. Do you want to fight monsters? Sail the seas and explore shipwrecks? Build massive castles? Dive deep into the underground? In Minecraft, you can do all of these things, and more. Minecraft’s greatest strength is that the game is whatever you want it to be. If you enjoy video games, you will probably find something to love in this game. It’s accessible for just about everyone. Minecraft: Java Edition is on this list because it has an accessibility feature which most games lack — and “most games” unfortunately includes other versions of Minecraft.

A game like Minecraft requires a lot of situational awareness. Creatures and monsters make sounds when you approach them. Often, that’s the first sign you’ll have that something’s near. Without sound cues, it’s easy for monsters to sneak up on you. So Java Edition includes full captioning for just about sound in the game, in a small log on the right-hand side of the screen. Every sound from “block is placed” to “hoglin turns to zoglin” to “llama is decorated” shows up in this log, and you can see the last few sounds at any time. No sound, no matter how small, got overlooked, and they update in real time. You can’t change the size of the captions or the font, and it might be hard to read for some players. But it’s a welcome accessibility feature, and it’s one more games should adopt.

Minecraft’s audio accessibility features include:

• Full captioning for all in-game sounds
• Captions for enemy noises, villager noises, ambient sound, and even the player’s footsteps
• Accessibility menu on launch that allows you to turn on captions before the game begins

Until Dawn

Until Dawn is, essentially, an interactive horror movie. It plays a bit like a Telltale game, with a combination of third-person exploration, quick time event-heavy cutscenes, and moral choices that have a “butterfly effect” on the rest of the game. Depending on the choices that the player makes, any of the eight protagonists can die — and a strict autosave system keeps you from save-scumming. Your choices determine the game’s tone, the characters’ relationships with each other, and, of course, the story’s ending. The game’s garnered controversy for the way it treats some subjects — including its treatment of the main antagonist, a creature from Native American mythology so taboo to discuss that you’re not supposed to speak its name. But critics have praised Until Dawn’s level design, permadeath system, and immersive nature. And because of some clever design choices, the game remains immersive, even if you can’t hear.

As usual with games on this list, the subtitles are excellent, and the game gives visual cues for all important events. But the thing that sets Until Dawn apart is its high level of graphical fidelity. The motion capture performances are so good that you can lip-read some of the dialogue. And the realistic graphics mean that the jumpscares- including the gory ones- are frightening, without any need for sound cues. Add to that some clever use of controller vibration in noisy scenes — used sparingly, but with impact — and the game manages to immerse you with or without sound.

Until Dawn is designed to immerse you in the world, to make you care about the characters, and to make your choices matter. And thanks to its well-designed visuals and clear subtitles, you can sink into that world and make those choices, without a hearing disability getting between you and the game.

Until Dawn’s audio accessibility features include:

• Subtitles that are easy to read, include character names, and stand out from the background
• Visual cues for anything announced with a sound cue- items and QTEs included
• Controller vibration for scenes with audio cues
• Incredible mo-cap performances allow for lip reading

Dead By Daylight

Dead by Daylight is the multiplayer horror game. While there have been plenty of imitators and attempts at replicating its success, none have come close to DBD’s reach and longevity. Some of that stems from the bevy of popular licensed Killers, which include Ghostface, Freddy Kreugur, and Leatherface, to name just a few. The gameplay is what keeps players coming back, however, and in that regard it feels like BHVR managed to catch lightning in a bottle. Despite being relatively straightforward on the surface, DBD’s simple to learn, hard to master, hide-and-seek 1 Killer vs 4 Survivors multiplayer is incredibly addictive, and with dozens of maps and characters, the game stays fresh even after hundreds of hours.

Due to the fact that it’s essentially souped up hide-and-seek, being able to hear the opposing player(s) is pretty important. The Killer’s presence is indicated by the “Terror Radius”, which is heard as a beating heart and theme music that gets louder and more intense as the Killer approaches the player’s position. This was an issue for deaf or HoH players — but it won’t be after the upcoming patch, which will add a visual Terror Radius that can be toggled via the accessibility menu. Already present in the accessibility menu are subtitles, with a wide range of text sizes to choose from. Voice lines aren’t common in DBD, but it’s nice that you don’t have to miss any of them. Additionally, while not a perfect solution, there are a number of perks that can help mitigate being unable to hear specific audio cues.

YouTuber BlinKyRTX has created an excellent video on the best perks for Deaf/HoH Killer players to use, which you can see here.

Dead By Daylight’s audio accessibility features include:

• Subtitles with a wide range of visual options
• Visual cue for the main audio cue in the game for Survivors (the Terror Radius)
• A large number of perks that allow players to gain information visually

Accessibility is a tricky thing, and not every game on this list will be accessible to every player. But every game on this list has tried something to make their experiences more welcoming for hearing disabled players. Whether it’s revolutionary mo-cap, artistic and clever sound visualization, or a character who uses sign language, these games go the extra mile.

Are there any games with hearing accessibility features we missed? Are there any other forms of disability accessibility you’d like us to cover? Let us know in the comments.