Ubisoft: All In-house Games to Be Designed for the Hearing Impaired

Ubisoft will from now on produce games that are friendly to the deaf and hard of hearing by adding subtitles, according to several sources including Gamasutra.

Far Cry 2 will be the first game released by the French publishing firm to include subtitles, followed by Prince of Persia and Shaun White Snowboarding later this year.

Far Cry 2: Now with Subtitles (not shown)

Ubisoft also runs a charity known as AbilityTogether, which will partner with non-profit organization Handicap International to launch a game called Handigo. The game is a set of educational mini-games which "puts the player in the shoes of someone with a physical disability, a sensory disability, or learning difficulties," in order to educate the public about accessibility issues.

Blake: Ubisoft isn't the first game company to add subtitles or closed-captions to its games, but it is among the first to make it a policy. I know virtually no one disabled, but I do welcome a concerted move for greater accessibility and so should all gamers. Likewise, if Ubisoft intends to keep using French voice actors for English dialogue in a game taking place in Japan, I'll be taking advantage of the new policy myself.