Playing Dota 2 with a hearing loss & handling Voice chat
Hi folks, I posted yesterday about getting to Immortal as a deaf player (https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1szoky1/deaf\_player\_finally\_reached\_immortal\_as\_a\_pos\_3/)
Thought I would share my setup since many folks asked!
As you can see below, I use Google Transcribe, propped up against my monitor stand, while it transcribes any spoken sounds. I glance it it when I see the audio sign flashing or if something new shows up on my phone from my peripheral vision. Almost like a minimap #2.
Transcribe isn't super accurate, but enough to know what's going on. Wish I could mute some of the hero voice lines so they don't get sprinkled across the transcription. These examples below were from chill, non spammy games, but some games have literally 9 players spamming voice lines and it fills up the screen.
Of course Valve won't allow muting those because it's a cash cow.
There was another question on whether converting audio into visual cues unintended by the game is a form of cheating that I thought was a very interesting/deep question. Hypothetically what if someone at the pro level suffered a hearing loss due to an accident and needed support like this? Should this be allowed? If so, how?
Posted May 1, 2026, 3:45 AM UTC