Diablo IV’s Accessibility Options are Surprisingly Good

Admittedly, I played the Diablo IV Open Beta over the weekend expecting to be disappointed. The development cycle has been plagued by controversy, staff layoffs/restructuring, not to mention the revelations of misconduct that hover over Activision Blizzard like a shroud. However, after playing the Beta I find myself optimistic that if there’s one thing Activision Blizzard has figured out, it’s accessibility.

Now, before I dig into this I need to make something very clear. My coverage of this is not in any way absolving, condoning, or cosigning the wrongdoing of Activision Blizzard employees, executives, or leadership. This is to make sure that anyone interested in Diablo IV can tell whether the game will be accessible to them.

I’m certain that there will be more options etc. available in the full release, but what was already available in the Open Beta was surprising. On the text/audio side of things, you could utilize a screen reader (with customizable options) that will allow people with impaired vision to be able to understand text elements on the screen. The screen reader works in such a way that if you hover your cursor over the text, the game reads it to you. There are even multiple voices available to adjust to your preferences.

Additionally, you can change the font size, scaling, color, and opacity for a variety of things to tailor the visuals to your needs. There are also text-to-speech options that make chat boxes and non-voiced dialogue audible thanks to text-to-speech functionality. On the opposite end, there is also a transcription function that will turn voice chat audio into text for hearing-impaired users.

On top of that, you can adjust the highlights on items, characters, NPCs, and map elements in order to make them more easily distinguishable. To go with this, there are colorblind options to make various visual elements (Diablo games are made of red) more friendly for colorblind players. On top of that, there are visual options to reduce strobing, flashing, and screen-shake for players who are sensitive to epilepsy, motion sickness, and other similar issues.

Another unique audio option I haven’t noticed before (though it might be available in Diablo 3) is the ability to adjust what sounds items of specific rarities or types make. You can distinguish things by rarity or item type, allowing you to be able to recognize what item dropped without needing to look at it.

In terms of controls, the accessibility options include keybind (and controller) customization, adjustments for holds/toggles, and a few other standard things. However, you can also swap the functionality of the left and right joysticks on gamepads, so that if you use a controller differently you can tailor those options to suit your needs.

Diablo IV’s beta impressed me on multiple levels, but its accessibility is promising. If this is how accessible the game is at launch, it’ll be far and away better than most games of its kind. Hopefully, the dev team will take people’s feedback and keep adding accessibility functionality after launch as well.