Hearing Impairment Accessibilty

[Shenanigaming]

My best friend, who loves this game, lost her hearing in her left ear just over a year ago.

When she’s streaming, I’m able to give her a warning when there is a predator coming up on her left, but sometimes due to lag my warning comes too late, and certainly doesn’t come at all when she’s playing on her own. This is, understandably, a source of great vexation for her, and winds up making her lose more than once. 

An optional HUD assist to indicate the presence/distance of a predator/crows/shelter would open this game up to so many people in the deaf community, and those with hearing impairments. 

[RossBondReturns]

Totally agreed! +1!

This could be a very simple feature to implement Half-Life 2 did it quite well with subtitles (for the hearing impaired for just about everything). One could also record audio cues using the voice actors. "Sounds like danger on the left" "Those birds could be marking something." Or perhaps even directional cues- subtle ones- like the player character looking to the left, I'm loathe to suggest directional markings like a traditional HUD.

However these additions should be toggleable in the options and would make the game more playable for the hearing impaired.

[MarrowStone]

+1 for this, 

Even just a simple danger cue,

like a stylized wolf face in the style of the (freezing starving etc) icons that would change from white gradually to red depending on how close and in the edge of the screen in the direction would help.

The comment above though would be best but more work for devs, however, user accessibility would earn my respect (and probably others')

[RCCross]

I understand hearing impaired people have more use of other senses, like a wider FOV or more sensitive skin to vibrations and temperatures (like the breath of a wolf maybe?) even the nose gets more sensitive to smells and temperature of the air. 

But it's very limited, to maybe 5-10 meters radius?

I don't think making these icons work for a wolf that is 100m away is a good idea.

[Mesha]

I have played in some first person shooters that use a small blurred light at the edge of the screen to indicate someone just out of your visual range.  I think that would work well.

 

On a entrirly different track how about something like this http://www.instructables.com/id/Stereo-Speakers-with-Synched-LED-Lighting/

I bet somewhere there is an arduino project to map frequency to a range of LED lights. You might start here http://www.princetronics.com/sound-sensitive-lights-w-sound-sensor-arduino/

 

I know very little about programing other than dabbling a few years ago with Java, but I was able to cobble together a twin analog input to act as a two engine throttle for using with twin engine aircraft in a flight sim.  Arduino is pretty easy to use and the community is super helpful.  You could make a cool device if you work at it I bet.