Audio Cues
Brandon Cole · 2025
T he best way to communicate something to a blind player in a game isn’t always with narration. Narration is great, and much can be communicated that way, but sometimes you need something more. That’s where audio cues come in. There are lots of reasons you would use an audio cue instead of, or to compliment, narration. First, positionality. The nice thing about audio cues is that, since they can be sound sources in your game world, the player will hear the audio cue positionally where they were meant to hear it. If an audio cue is telling a player to jump onto a ledge that is to their right while also being slightly in front of them, that’s something you can communicate by attaching the cue to the ledge, and of course by using positional audio in your game to begin with. Side note, while you should include mono audio as a feature for the deaf/hard of hearing community, please avoid making your game entirely mono as a general rule. The audio is the closest thing the blind have to graphics, and positionality matters.