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.

Game	Platform	Accessibility	Quote
Fortnite	XBox 1/Series X, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Android	10/10	“…deaf/HoH accessibility at its best.” – CanIPlayThat
The Last Of Us Part II	PS4/PS5	10/10	“I launched The Last of Us 2 with literally every setting and option I have ever needed to play a game and enjoy it in the way that suits me best.” – CanIPlayThat
Watch Dogs: Legion	XBox1/Series X, PS4/PS5, PC	10/10	“Ubisoft’s most accessible game to date.” – CanIPlayThat
Moss	PS4 VR	8/10	“The slight misstep in skipping full captions doesn’t make the game un-enjoyable, rather it keeps it at 100% rather than 110%.”
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey	XBox 1/Series X, PS4/PS5, PC	10/10	“Sound visualization is a nice balance of accessibility and challenge”- CanIPlayThat
Gears 5	XBox 1/Series X, PC	10/10	“a masterpiece in Deaf/HOH accessibility.” – CanIPlayThat
Fran Bow	PC, Mac, Linux, Android	10/10	“Fran Bow does very well with Deaf accessibility.” – CanIPlayThat
Blair Witch	XBox 1, PS4/PS4 VR, PC, Nintendo Switch, Meta Quest 2, Oculus Quest, Amazon Luna, SteamOS	10/10	“…the first horror game I can recall that was actually Deaf/hoh accessible.” – CanIPlayThat
Pharaoh: A New Era	PC	9/10	“Bad things are basically always happening, but that is why it’s a lot of fun.” – Monstervine
Minecraft: Java Edition	Windows/Mac/Linux	8/10	“a very handy feature that is so simply implemented and fitting to the style of Minecraft” – DualShockers
Until Dawn	PS4	10/10	“Supermassive Games really did an incredible job with this and they should be proud of how well they did making a game like this accessible for deaf players…” – CanIPlayThat
Dead By Daylight	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox 1/Series X, Nintendo Switch, Android/iOS	7/10	“Developer Behaviour Interactive has been improving the accessibility in Dead by Daylight for a while now. The studio appears to be taking feedback mostly from the community.” – CanIPlayThat

What Makes Games Accessible For Deaf Gamers?

An image of a person taking a hearing test. The person is wearing a set of earphones- one ear is black, and the other is red- and pointing up with one finger. — Photo by Mark Paton on Unsplash.

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

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2017	Battle Royale	XBox 1/Series X, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Android	Sound visualization for every sound in the game

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.

fortnite 20220407202506 scaled 1 png — Every symbol on the orange circle is a different sound, from footsteps to gunfire. (Image from CanIPlayThat)

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

Promotional art from the game Fortnite. A person in a striped shirt and short, baseball player style pants stands brandishing a lead pipe. The person is outside of a modern-looking orange-and blue building called Durr Burger, with a giant burger on top of the building. A second player, in thick armor, stands on top of the roof; a third player is carrying a wheelbarrow full of junk. — Off-topic, but Fortnite’s visual style really is something else. The devs knocked its design out of the park.

Fortnite promotional art, with three characters posed around a pile of junk. A brown-haired, light-skinned man poses with a baseball bat on top of a diner booth. A bearded, older light-skinned man stands with his legs spread, wearing a bent traffic cone like a wizard's hat. A dark-skinned woman with dreadlocks holds up a teddy bear, looking at it with interest. — Off-topic, but Fortnite’s visual style really is something else. The devs knocked its design out of the park.

The Last of Us Part II

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2020	Survival Horror	PS4/PS5	Accessible in every way possible, including Deaf accessibility

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

A photorealistic scene from The Last Of Us: Part 2. A blood-covered arm rests on the floor of a grey, abandoned house. In the background, a person's silhouette stands in front of a lit doorway. — It’s a grim world, but it’s one *anyone* can explore on their own terms.

A photorealistic scene from The Last Of Us: Part 2. Ellie, a brown-haired, light-skinned girl, is sitting in front of a waterfall, playing an acoustic guitar. Dina, a brown-skinned girl with dark hair, sits in the foreground, her back turned to the viewer, listening to Ellie play. The scene is framed by green leaves. — It’s a grim world, but it’s one *anyone* can explore on their own terms.

Watch Dogs: Legion

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2020	Open-World Action-Adventure	XBox1/Series X, PS4/PS5, PC	Ubisoft’s usual high standards for closed captioning

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

A gameplay image from Watch Dogs: Legion. A realistic image of a street battle in London. In the background, three people in black riot gear are trying to shoot down a drone. In the foreground, a woman in a black baseball hat and futuristic clothing, including leggings with a glowing triangle pattern, crouches behind a building. She has a holographic screen projected in front of her eyes and is holding a controller in her hands; a white line connects her controller to the drone. — I prefer Shadowrun to Watch Dogs, but Shadowrun could use more creepy-looking pig men.

A promotional image from Watch Dogs: Legion. A semi-realistic image of three figures standing in front of a British flag. The figure in the center is a person wearing a trenchcoat, a collared shirt, and a detailed, realistic pig mask. The pig mask is wearing a monocle and has a cigar sticking out of its mouth. The two figures to each side of it are wearing futuristic helmets that fully obscure their faces- the one on the left looks like a cross between a knight's helmet and a motorcycle helmet, and the one on the right looks like a motorcycle helmet with an attached gas mask. The image is lit with harsh red and blue lighting. — I prefer Shadowrun to Watch Dogs, but Shadowrun could use more creepy-looking pig men.

Moss

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2018	VR Adventure	PS4 VR	A cute animal companion that communicates in ASL

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

A stylized image from the game Moss. Quill, a white mouse, stands on the forest floor. She's small enough that a tuft of grass is at the height of her chest, and she's wearing a red scarf and grey gauntlet. In the background, there are taller trees, ferns, and a red mushroom. Sunlight filters through the trees. — Moss is like candy to anyone who grew up on Redwall.

An image from the game Moss of the inside of a stone building. The building looks a little like a cathedral, with large Gothic arched windows and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The room is full of dark wooden desks, chairs, and study carrels. The player stands in front of a book stand that holds a beautifully bound, dark green book. The book is titled "Moss" and is covered in golden, vine-like embellishments. — Moss is like candy to anyone who grew up on Redwall.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2019	3rd Person Open-World Survival	XBox 1/Series X, PS4/PS5, PC	Sound visualization that fits the game’s visual style

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:

An image of the sound visualization in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. The image is of a natural area, overlaid with thick, dark myst. In the center of the screen are pale yellow circles, overlaid with a glowing image of an animal's eyes and sharp teeth. — (Image from CanIPlayThat, used to illustrate the feature)

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

A realistic screenshot from Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey of an early hominid fighting a sabertoothed tiger with a sharpened stick. The hominid has brown fur and is backed down, trying to defend itself. The sabertooth is on a high rock and is looking at the hominid. — Again — an absolutely gorgeous game. The team at Panache did an amazing job.

A realistic screenshot from Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey of an early hominid perched on a tree branch, high above the treetops. It's dwarfed by the blue, starry sky, and is looking out at the Milky Way. — Again — an absolutely gorgeous game. The team at Panache did an amazing job.

Gears 5

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2019	Third-Person Shooter	XBox 1/Series X, PC	Careful thought was put into accessibility at every stage.

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

A semi-realistic piece of promotional art from Gears 5. Three people run away from a green explosion. On the left, a brown-haired man shoots behind him with a large submachine gun. A bald man with thick mutton chops runs shoulder-forward, holding a futuristic grenade launcher. To the right, a young woman with dark hair in a ponytail sprints away.

A piece of semi-realistic promo art for Gears 5 showing a desaturated image of a squad of soldiers in futuristic armour. The protagonist, Kait, is the first soldier in line, holding a large gun against her shoulder. She's a dark-haired woman with a big nose and fur around her collar. The protagonist of the original series, Markus Fenix, stands behind her. Markus is a white man with a stubbly chin and a soul patch; he's staring at the camera dramatically. Two other soldiers stand behind them, one facing the camera, the other looking off to the side with a large, futuristic gun raised.

Fran Bow

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2015	Horror point-and-click adventure	PC, Mac, Linux, Android	Therapeutic psychological horror mixed with darkly childlike whimsy

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.

A stylized cartoon image from the game Fran Bow. Our protagonist, Fran-- a girl with light skin, a brown bobbed hair cut, large eyes surrounded by dark circles, and a yellow dress- stands to one side of an industrial looking room. The walls are metal, covered with rivets, pipes, gauges, buttons, and other mechanical-looking elements. To one side of the room is a large control panel. In front of that control panel is a red stationary bike. A skeleton in a top hat, tailcoat, pants, and formal dress shoes rides the stationary bike. He's looking over his shoulder at Fran; there are red lights where his eyes should be. — We’ve tried to keep the graphic content to a minimum, but this game contains a lot of cartoon blood as well as jauntily dressed skeletons.

Our protagonist, Fran, stands at the left side of the image. Fran is a young girl with light skin, a brown bobbed hair cut, large eyes surrounded by dark circles, and a yellow dress. She's standing in front of an arched window made of roots; the sides of the window are covered in pink flowers the size of Fran's head. At Fran's feet, there's a small black cat, standing in front of her. The room's floor shifts from being made of stylized grass to being made of black-and-white checkerboard tile. A large red curtain covers one side of the room. In front of the curtain, a woman in a pink dress stands in front of a dias. The woman wears a goat skull on top of her light hair. She has big dark eyes with bloody circles underneath them. She's carrying a knife, and is surrounded by fleshy hands, each of which has an eye ni the palm. She's brandishing another black cat, and looks like she's threatening it. — We’ve tried to keep the graphic content to a minimum, but this game contains a lot of cartoon blood as well as jauntily dressed skeletons.

Blair Witch

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2019	First person	XBox 1, PS4/PS4 VR, PC, Nintendo Switch, Meta Quest 2, Oculus Quest, SteamOS	Fear that doesn’t rely on sound cues

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

Photorealistic gameplay from Blair Witch (2019). The player stands in the middle of a blue-tinted, dark forest. It's hard to see much, but the player is holding a flashlight. Its beam illuminates Blair Witch stick dolls- four sticks crudely tied together in an approximation of a stick figure.

A posterized black-and-red photograph used as promo art for Blair Witch (2019). The image is of a human figure with short hair, seen from behind. They're walking through a path in the woods with a dog by their side. The tree branches above them make the shape of the iconic Blair Witch stick dolls. To the right of the person and the dog, a stylized stick doll, and the words "Blair Witch", are overlaid over the image.

Pharaoh: A New Era

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2023	City Builder	PC	A really good representative of a genre that’s historically been deaf/HoH friendly

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

A stylized, isometric depiction of an Egyptian city from Pharaoh: A New Era. The city is in the desert, with many small houses at the edges and larger, more imposing buildings in the center. To the top right of the image is a riverbank covered with fields. Above the fields is the dark blue river. Two boats float in the water. At the bottom right corner of the image, the tip of a pyramid covers everything behind it. — As an aside: this game also has a fantastic sense of humour.

A stylized image of a loading screen from Pharaoh: A New Era. A stele stands in front of a cloudy, pastel sky. The stele is made of tan bricks and is painted with two strips of pattern- one at the top and one at the bottom. The pattern is tesselating blue and yellow triangles. Below the stele, a loading screen message says, "Use the gameplay options to set up the game the way you enjoy it the most. We're just here to have fun and build pyramids." — As an aside: this game also has a fantastic sense of humour.

Minecraft: Java Edition

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2011	Sandbox	Windows/Mac/Linux	Adaptive captioning on the fly

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

A stylized image of a castle built in Minecraft. The castle is shown from a 3/4 view and appears to be under construction. It's mostly made of grey stone, but the foundation is a mixture of grass and dirt blocks. Scaffolding rises around a tall, buttressed tower. Orange and black flags hang from the tower. A buttressed bridge connects the tower to a dirt hillside, and a waterfall flows down the hill. There's a path below the bridge, and Alex- one of the two default Minecraft avatars, a blocky woman with orange hair- stands on the path. End description. — Minecraft is one of those games that you just think of as eternal. It’s kind of a shock to realize it “only” came out in 2011.

A stylized image of a shipwreck from Minecraft. The shipwreck is deep underwater, surrounded by kelp and overgrown with seaweed. Steve and Alex, the two default minecraft avatars, are swimming above the shipwreck. Below the shipwreck, two cod and a dolphin swim past. — Minecraft is one of those games that you just think of as eternal. It’s kind of a shock to realize it “only” came out in 2011.

Until Dawn

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2015	Interactive Drama	PC	Immersion through subtitles, mo-cap, and vibration

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

A stylized promotional image from Until Dawn. An hourglass with a skull in the top bulb drains white sand; the bottom bulb holds a small cabin, covered in snow, and the silhouettes of the protagonists. The hourglass is on a stylized blue background that looks like both crumpled paper and a blizzard; the game's name is displayed in faded white text beside the hourglass. — The butterfly effect is a fascinating game mechanic. More games ought to use it.

A photorealistic image of a group of teenagers- the game's protagonists- standing in the snow outside a cabin. A dark-haired young woman and a young man with short hair stand to the left of the image. An androgynous person in a grey hoodie stands in the middle; they're backlit, so light glows around the top of their head. A young woman with her back to us stands to the right; she's wearing a puffy red jacket. — The butterfly effect is a fascinating game mechanic. More games ought to use it.

Dead By Daylight

Release Year	Genre	Platforms	What It Does Best
2016	Asymetrical multiplayer survival horror	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox 1/Series X, Nintendo Switch, Android/iOS	Sound visualization in a multiplayer setting

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.

An image of Dead By Daylight's terror radius visualization. The image shows a spooky, run-down fence surrounded by trees. The player character- a young man with dark hair, glasses, light skin, and a short-sleeved collared shirt- stands in the center of the image. A glowing, red, realistic heart hangs in his chest. This heart is the terror visualization. — The new visual Terror Radius will also have options for different colorblindness types

An image showing the different colorblind options for the terror radius visualization. The image is split into four sections, each with the same picture of the player character. The player character- a young man with dark hair, glasses, light skin, and a short-sleeved collared shirt- stands in the center of each section. A glowing heart hangs in his chest. Each section of the image is colored slightly differently, showing the different filters the devs created to compensate for different forms of colorblindness. — The new visual Terror Radius will also have options for different colorblindness types

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.