My wife and I have a friend who is deaf and we're thinking about inviting her to our game. While my wife can sign pretty well, my signing skills are pretty rudimentary and the other players at the table don't sign at all. My question is, has anyone here had deaf players at the table in a situation like this, and if so, what did you do to help the hearing and deaf players communicate with one another and how did you help everyone feel included? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.
DO you have a laptop you could hook up to a projector and have him type everything he says? HAve him type and then have something read it outloud so everyone can hear what he says like Microsoft Sam.
Its going to have to be a group thing.
Most deaf people i've ever met were moderate to great lip-readers. ASsuming your friend is too that makes at least half the equation alot easier.
Have them sit at the other end of the table, or in the middle of hte table and make sure everyone who speaks faces the person and speaks clearly and relatively slowly.
As for them talking to you all- at first your wife will have to play interpreter unless the group has some projector or something of that like. In the mean time- work on sign language. both you and your group actually if they are all willing to learn it too.
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The most important thing will be communication from the GM to the deaf player. The GM is the source of everything the players are experiencing, so if one player can't understand the GM you are going to be dead in the water.
Ideally the GM would be able to sign everything while talking and/or the player would be able to lip read. Having someone else interpret between the GM and the player would likely slow things down considerably. You may also want to look into speech to text (and/or text to speech) applications. They've come a long way in the past few years.
Another thing to consider would be communication flow. If you adopt a system where the GM recognizes each player in turn (rather than 'just speak up when you know what you want to do') it should be easier for her to follow. Alot of game mechanics can be reduced to a few simple signs that everyone could learn (e.g. 'roll', 'search', numbers, et cetera).
Ultimately it will probably be a bit of trial and error. Start off with everything you can think of / set up to aid communication, even overlapping / redundant options, and then whittle it down to the ones that are working.
Dragon naturally speaking talk to text type thing?
I would talk to them and ask what works best with them. They have experience in this area and will appreciate you asking how to help them enjoy the game.
This. While I've not played with the hearing impaired, I have played with the seeing impaired, and they already had a strong sense of what they would need to make sure the game runs smoothly, both for them and everyone else.
The deaf friend will likely already have access to materials and mechanisms that will enable a group situation more easily. If she is already a gamer, she probably has a number of solutions prepared already. Ask her otherwise what you can do to help, not say, "We've done this for you," and assume it will work.
Before the game starts, make sure the other players are also aware that she is hearing impaired and make sure they know what they need to do (such as be sure they turn their head toward her so she can read lips).
Good luck.