As the environment changes, the definition of competence changes.

Ultima Online

Equal World

Not surprisingly, the player base that enjoys UO includes far more people with hearing impairments than any other game. Even among players with no disability anywhere, there are quite a few who turn off sound and music to speed up the process. And communicating in UO can be done only by text, even if ICQ or IRC is used behind the scenes. In other words, as long as you can see, move your fingers, and type, there is no problem at all. There may be many players who are not able to use their legs, but I don't know of any. I myself suffered a rather serious injury to my leg while traveling, but it did not interfere with my UO play at all. At most, I had to sit out and change compresses when it hurt.

I met one such player, a warrior, after leaving the PKK guild DE (see this story) and almost retired from playing UO. We dived into Britannia for the first time in a long time, hunted together in a dungeon, and when we talked about sound, he told me that he was hearing impaired.

"We are now in the same world without sound. I can see your face and hear your voice in writing. The letters guide our communication.

Then we talked about various things: UO is very popular among these hearing impaired people. They want to go outside, but sometimes they are afraid to go out because they cannot hear the sounds around them. Since they cannot easily meet their friends at a distance, they often use e-mail or IRC to talk to each other. One day, one of them mentioned the existence of UO, saying, "We can talk together regardless of the distance. They set aside time every day to gather in the tavern, in the tower, and sometimes in the dungeon. UO, where they could even enjoy meeting strangers without fear, was for them not a game but a tool.

"By the way, we started out playing together, but now we're all over the place. We just exchange e-mails and say, 'Hey, I hunted a bunch of lich the other day,' or 'Hey, I just bought a house, come visit me. We are all in different guilds and play with different people. As long as we are in Britannia, we don't have to use sign language to communicate with other deaf people.

"For us, Britannia is a world without obstacles. It's a lot of fun, even swearing when the PKs beat us up."

That day he showed me possibilities in the game that I had never thought of. After I left him with the words, "I'll see you again and we'll hunt together," I wished him many more years of fun in his play.

Deaf people are just not good at communicating through atmospheric vibrations.

No barriers to text-based communication

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