Microsoft has recently been striving for more accessibility in games, releasing the Xbox Adaptive Controller last year to give people with disabilities a viable way to play both PC and Xbox games. Gears 5 is the company`s biggest game of the year, and marks the first in-house production to really focus on being as approachable and accessible as possible.The Coalition`s hard work has certainly paid off. Can I Play That, a site dedicated to reviewing video game accessibility options, has awarded Gears 5 a perfect score for including comprehensive options for deaf players and those that are hard of hearing. `Readers, you are about to see something I don`t think we`ve ever been able to do before in all of our years of Deaf/hoh accessibility reviews,` Courtney Craven`s review says. `What follows isn`t so much a review as it`s a series of `Look at all the things they got so very right.` Because what they got right is everything. There`s not a single thing I can say needs improving in terms of Gears 5`s Deaf/hoh accessibility.`Wow! Extremely proud of this and all the hard work the team did at @CoalitionGears , especially @ottosson to make #Gears5 our most approachable and accessible game to date. Thank you Courtney! https://t.co/DMOx4KvkYx - Rod Fergusson (@GearsViking) September 5, 2019The praise starts with how Gears 5 presents all of these options, with the first screen in the game letting you toggle subtitles and select text size before any gameplay or cutscenes begin. The subtitles themselves are lauded for being incredibly information-inclusive and unique compared to what you typically see in games. Subtitles not only relay spoken dialogue, but also tell you if a character is speaking off-camera (like over a radio), spell out various sound effects, and indicate what the speaker sounds like, including the non-speaking noises they make.The most eye-opening aspect of Gears 5`s subtitles, however, is the fact that they let you know when the combat music stops. This ...
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