Accessibility is one of the most important focuses of games and developers in recent years. Blizzard is no different as they recently discussed their plans for accessibility in the upcoming Diablo 2 Resurrected.
You may recall Blizzard actually wanted your feedback regarding accessibility back in March of this year. At the time, they asked,
“Every voice matters at Blizzard, and we want to make sure our epic entertainment experiences are truly epic for ALL our players. If an accessibility issue has become a barrier to play our games, we would like to hear from you.”
In fact, we have our own thoughts on accessibility as it pertains to MMOs and how much work is still left to be done on that front. With respect to Blizzard, they recently published a lengthy community post outlining their approach to accessibility.
The team begins by talking about quality of life opportunities the team faced when developing around accessibility. This includes things like larger fonts, gamma and contrast settings, and more. One big opportunity here was in auto-gold pick-up. As they noted,
“If a player with a disability or hand injury was looting in Diablo II: Resurrected, this option could alleviate physical stress without compromising the core gameplay experience.”
Key bindings were another area where Blizzard focused, providing players with ample options and bindable actions to both mouse and keyboard. For those players where prolonged holding and repetitive actions is a challenge, you’ll now be able to toggle such actions.
The post talks about audio accessibility as well for volume levels, audio cues, situational awareness, and more. You can read the full post here. In case you missed it, Diablo 2 Resurrected received a release date in an announcement last month. You can play the ARPG when it releases on September 23 of this year.
