EVE General Discussion

That was my first guess also. Lots of deaf students here at RIT.

I got a couple of Emails back from hearing impaired advocacy groups:

The guy from NAD (the biggest, most well funded group) was like "Video games! meh, don't waste my time. Here's a link, talk to them. ------------------->http://www.ablegamers.com/
The link is pretty interesting, I registered there and will start a thread on their forums when I get a chance.

One has yet to respond.

And the third was to "The Hearing and Speech Agency." Amyb9, the Coordinator of their Sign Language Program sent back a great letter and asked a bit about the game. She said that she had some ideas but would like to see Eve first hand. I sent her a budy invite. So no griefing Amy!

I use a program called Ditto that provides an enhanced clipboard. You can store a history of text in it and it is easy to pop up and select what you want. I of course use it to taunt miners in the hopes of extracting tears. But it could just as easily be used to load up with several key phrases for use in PvP. What you would need more than anything is an FC that used standardized phrases for common tasks to cut down on the time it takes you to understand what he is saying and therefore pick the right relay text off the clipboard. Combine that with an FC who actually uses the Tag system on the overview and I would think you could get by pretty well.

Ditto:
http://download.cnet.com/Ditto/3000-2384_4-10456979.html

Edit: The previous link was apparently some site masqurading as the Ditto tool. Very sorry about that. This one is the place I got my copy. Works fine for me, your mileage may vary.

You're right about multiple speakers and such - that wouldn't work . That's why you couldn't use it directly from voice comms, a human would still be needed to relay between voice comms and the people being communicated to. It would just hopefully be faster since the program would type out what the person doing the relaying was saying in real time. Perhaps that might allow more people to be able to volunteer to be working relay since one wouldn't have to be able to type really fast? Although each individual relayer would probably need to have their own voice-recognition program set up to recognize how they speak. As for terms, once you clarify to the program you are saying "cyno" and not "cyan" I think it remembers that...you "train" it with the terms and shorthand terms (AU, awox, npc, etc) you commonly use. Just an idea...

This should be perfect. All it takes is a FC that is willing to use it.

Unequivocally the answer is no. Dragon Naturally Speaking must be trained to the speaker and requires high quality input. Being deaf myself, I've tried to run Dragon through Teamspeak and Vent and the results are virtually unintelligible...even if only one person is speaking.

You can get a good idea of how limited untrained voice to text is by using the feature on Youtube. Youtube has an "automatic captions" option for videos that don't include captions (not to be mistaken for captions that have been manually added to a video). To see what I'm talking about, watch the video linked below with "automatic captions" turned on (accessible by the CC icon at the bottom of the video window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_02lo5P3vE

These are results with only one person speaking...now image what Teamspeak or Vent is like...

If you find a person claiming to be deaf who uses voice comms and claiming to be using some voice to text solution successfully...they are in all likelihood not deaf and and trying to pretend they are for whatever reason. This really annoys me because, being a deaf player, I am asked to come on voice comms all the time and when I explain that I'm deaf there is always someone who claims to have known someone who was deaf who used voice to text successfully and that I should put a solution like that in place. The truth is, I'm not being difficult...there are currently NO workable solutions to allow deaf players to interact using voice comms.

Okay, I'll rant a bit...

Here are a few of the more notable discriminatory treatments I've had in Eve due to my deafness.

1. Last year I tried to join Eve University but the recruiter said I could not join since I could not hear the voice comms due to the fact that I'm deaf. I appreciate their teaching new players Eve, but thought that treatment was absolutely reprehensible.

2. As a girl gamer, I was invited to join the Women Gamers of Eve channel of which I was a member for almost a year. The admin who invited me allowed me to avoid the teamspeak interview (to verify I am really a girl) because I shared with her my personal website, hosted under MYNAMEIRL.COM (which is also Maggie) and contained a number of photos of me. I had her send me a email from the contact form on the site to verify that it was me. I also let her see me on facebook and run a whois search on my website domain name to see my name yet again as the owner of the site (along with my cell number and home address!). In retrospect, this was all very very stupid of me to share like that but that's what I did. Then, about a year later, the main channel admin singled me out when she heard I was deaf and started asking me how I got into the channel. I told her, but she demanded the voice interview and removed me. I just thought the whole thing was incredibly rude and insensitive. I could let this person hear my voice or see me on cams, but after being targeted like that because of my being deaf...I have absolutely no interest in being involved with anything in which that person is involved.

3. Here is something that has happened a few times...I'll be in a fleet doing some sort of OP and suddenly convo goes completely silent for 10+ minutes...no one responding because they are not paying attention because they are on voice (not even a quick response saying "we are working on something in voice"). When I try to explain that I need to be kept better in the loop, on more than one occasion I've had guys respond that they think I'm trying to make the world revolve around me which is totally not true (not in these cases anyway ). Some of that may be a perception because I am very chatty but chat is THE ONLY communication I have in here. I think there is basically just a total disconnect with a lot of people with what it is like to be deaf and what is required for meaningful interaction.

I find to play Eve, I have to find players willing to NOT use voice comms so that communication is steady. This means I have to avoid large fleet activities altogether (except for incursions)...which are pretty straight forward and don't require comms once you know what you're doing.

Okay...my rant is over...If you are deaf or would like to play with a deaf player...look me up. I live in WH space with Highsec access so it's pretty easy to get to me.

Well I never posted anything but this is a nice thread.

I am hear impaired since birth and completely unable to use any kind of comms that are not live (including phones) because the main way I recognize speech is through lips reading. I am capable of hearing anyone speaking, even through TeamSpeak, but my problem comes about when I have a very severe difficulty assimilating spoken words.

This obviously limits me in the game because I like to fly with teams. In my old corp everyone knew that I had this problem and would write everything down in the fleet chat for me and use broadcast orders, but even so it was not perfect because they would pick the targets while speaking and warp me to the fight without even warning me, so I never knew if and/or who I was suposed to shoot.

Right now I'm in a different corp and not very confortable about telling my problem to people I don't know very well. They make hunting fleets and pressure everyone to use comms, hardly writing much info down on the chat, so I had to turn into flying solo if I wanted to be effective...

Sometimes I get angry with this kind of stuff. It's perfectly viable to use broadcast orders and chat to fly a fleet, broadcasting seems just as good, if not better, than comm orders. But CCP could work out a better UI for the fleet broadcast.

It has led to some funny situations though, after I tell someone that I'm deaf they ask if I can't join TS just to hear, when that's exactly the problem.

You can edit this post if you want Akali---^ Before someone copies it and you are remembered as a dumbass forever.

The thread I started over on Able gamers has no replies so far. I think just because they don't know me. If anyone has an account wit them, or wants to make one, please go over and post. Maybe a greater number of weapon bearing strangers will get them to open up!

http://www.ablegamers.com/1-general-game-discussion/7757-eve-online-deaf-friendly-mmo