Hello. It may occur to some of you people that my title suggests I'm deaf.
Well, yes, that's for sure. But that's the thing I'm not happy about. The deaf people of TF2.
I find it extremely frustrating when people only uses mic chat as a way of communication, due to my deafness, and then at some point, someone tries to talk to me. Heck, I even got banned about two times in public servers, because I 'didn't listen to them', even though I tried explaining to them about my deafness and how my hearing aids helps me hear, but not clearly. As you're assumed, they didn't believe me, and banned me. I get upset about my deafness, and how it separates me from the TF2 community, since the best TF2 players focuses on mic, and I barely understand them.
Now, for my suggestion. To make TF2center more 'deaf-friendly'. But you might ask, 'How on earth would they do that?'. There are some solutions.
First one is to add a caption box or heading during gameplay. It would make gameplay much easier, and requires the deaf person to understand what they are saying, while playing at the same time. The text should be big to read, and easy for the person to see. There is only one downside, though, and that's voice clarify. Based on today's technology, live captioning is not quite right. If you watch a YouTube video with Auto-captions on, you'll see some correct words said by person/thing, and some incorrect words not said by person/thing. But however, in some technology (Siri, for example), it works perfectly at most times.
Second is to put a better, and simple chat box for Mumble (use a plugin, e.g.). Sure, it may be easier to use a mic, but however, this idea is a bit different. Instead of using text, you'll use automatic voice commands (Medic!, Ubercharge, Move Ahead, etc.) for situations, by identifying the movements and actions of the player. But however, this may be very tricky to configre, and may take months, or even years to do so.
Third is a bit similar to the second idea, but however, uses binds for voice commands, and shows logos near the health bar and ammo bar based on the voice commands. Let's say you use a 'Sentry Ahead' voice command, and a logo based on the voice command would appear near your health bar. This would be MUCH easier for people to play TF2center, and also for pubs. But however, this may be exploitable, since it could override huds/configs. Not really recommended, but however, still a good idea.
There are a few other ideas, but they may be impossible/take ages to make. The LAST option I would like to see is to just not use Mumble at all
I would appreciate it if you guys would make this great TF2 community deaf-friendly, as it allows more people with disability to come together and play, and maybe make some more friends.
However, if you guys don't do anything, or just ignore this thread, you have no respect for the deaf community. Trust me, we may look retarded, but we are actually great players (sort of). People just doesn't know this.
Please, make TF2center deaf-friendly. I'm counting on you guys.