Sea of Thieves - Accessibility in Sea of Thieves

Rare’s Commitment to Accessibility

Accessibility is important to us – whether the gap between capability and the expectations of an experience is permanent, temporary or situational, everyone can benefit from more accessible, inclusive experiences.

Since Sea of Thieves’ launch in March 2018, at least 39 of our updates (as of September 2021) have contained accessibility improvements or entirely new features in addition to the many accessibility features included at launch.

As with any other part of our evolving experience, we strive to continually build and improve on features to make Sea of Thieves a more accessible, inclusive game. Whether it’s refining our systems for better narration, ensuring new experiences are accessible by design or taking feedback and listening to players, we’re always working to improve Sea of Thieves for everyone.

Inclusive Experiences – Expectations and Capabilities

Sea of Thieves is an online shared world, so you can always expect to encounter other players during a play session. You can form a crew with up to three other players, and our Alliance system allows multiple crews to work co-operatively.

Player communication is central to Sea of Thieves. Players can make use of both voice and text chat (with text-to-speech and speech-to-text support), as well as our Pirate Chat Radial for quick access to preset contextual messages. In addition to this, players can use in-game tools such as the Speaking Trumpet to extend the range of their communication, use our rich set of emotes to communicate non-verbally or raise flags to visually communicate their intent.

Playing Sea of Thieves requires traversing different terrain types and steering a ship across the seas – adjusting the sails, dropping the anchor, turning the wheel and aiming the cannons. While we do have audio and haptic cues in many areas, the physical nature of in-game interactions can be challenging for players with low or no vision without some visual assistance. This is an area of in-game accessibility that we are actively working to improve, with some exciting additions coming soon!

Visually, Sea of Thieves has been designed to have easily readable environments and models, with high visual contrast between elements. Most gameplay cues are delivered through multiple sensory modalities, such as on-screen VFX, audio and haptic feedback.

All our important dialogue is delivered through voice acting, and subtitles are provided for this by default in more than 10 different languages. Interactions with non-player characters are delivered via narrated multiple-choice menus.

Options for Enhancing Accessibility

The following options are available to players.

Input and Navigation

Find out which features have been implemented in Sea of Thieves to aid player input and navigation.

Keybinding Options

Most of our controls are fully rebindable on both keyboard and controller. Notable exceptions are some UI navigation controls, to prevent soft-locking the UI inputs.

Inverted Axes

Players can invert axes for camera/motion input.

Virtual Keyboard

Players without keyboards can opt to enter text via a virtual keyboard.

Recentre Mouse Position in Menus

Players can opt to always recentre the cursor when opening full-screen menus.

Auto Move

Players can opt to toggle forward motion on or off, reducing the need to hold down buttons while moving.

For more information, see this Support site article: Using Auto Move

Disable Controller Input on PC

Players may not always want to use the controller plugged into their PC, so this option disables controller input.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Disabling Controller Input on PC

Single Stick Navigation

This option allows Sea of Thieves to be played using a single analogue stick on the controller. This also enables the ‘Auto Centre Camera’, ‘Lock Interact Prompts’ and ‘Automatically Float in Water’ settings. With this enabled, players cannot strafe, look up or down, or look around when controlling using elements of the ship such as the wheel, capstan, sails or cannons.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Play with a Single Analogue Stick, Auto Centre Camera, and Automatically Float in Water

Tap to Interact

For tasks such as digging up chests and repairing the ship, the default requirement is a held input, i.e. holding down the appropriate button or key for a set period of time. This option enables the same action with a single tap. Players still need to remain close to the interaction point and wait for the same length of time as the held interaction.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for ‘Tap to Interact’

Toggle to Use

Similar to the feature above, this option enables the secondary uses of items such as lanterns, maps and ranged weapons to be toggled rather than held inputs.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for ‘Toggle to Use Item’

Automatically Float in Water

This setting is primarily paired with Single Stick Navigation, but can also used to prevent yourself from sinking beneath the surface of the water.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Play with a Single Analogue Stick, Auto Centre Camera, and Automatically Float in Water

Radial Menu Digital Input

By default, radial menus can be navigated in a linear fashion by using D-pad directions on a controller, or set up via keybindings on keyboard.

Toggle Radials

By default, radial menus are enabled by a held interaction. This setting allows them to be toggled on or off with a single button press.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Radial Menus

Sticky Radial items

With this option enabled, equipping an item doesn’t require holding the analogue stick while closing the radial menu. Instead, the last selected item is equipped.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Radial Menus

Escape as Back Button

Enables the Esc key to act as a back button, rather than closing a menu.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for ‘Escape’ to back out of settings pages in stages

Mouse and Gamepad Sensitivity

This setting allows players to dial in their preferred level of sensitivity for analogue input.

Audio

Information on the audio features implemented in Sea of Thieves to assist players with low to no vision.

Mono Audio

This mixes down spatial audio into one channel, rather than stereo.

Audio Mix Settings (Voice, Ambient etc.)

Allows players to customise the audio mix between the various separated audio channels.

UI Notification Narration

This setting (when toggled concurrently with ‘Let Games Read to Me’) narrates pop-up messages.

Narrate Full-Screen UI on Mouse Hover

This setting (when toggled concurrently with ‘Let Games Read to Me’) allows narration within menus to be triggered by mouse input.

Extend Audio Range of Sea Rocks When Sailing

When enabled, lowers general ship sounds whilst making sea rock sounds more prominent. Helpful for those at the wheel to hear imminent immovable obstacles in their path.

Aim Assist Audio

Within the Audio settings, players now have access to a new setting to aid them in combat with subtle audio cues. This setting is off by default, but when enabled, players aiming their weapon at an opposing crew member or enemy threat will hear an audio cue to help guide their shots.

For more information, see this Support site article: Aim Assist Audio

Riddle Map Narration

Players using ‘Let Games Read to Me’ will find that when raising a Riddle Map, the text found on the parchment will now be narrated.

Communication

Learn more about features implemented in Sea of Thieves to help players communicate, whether via voice or text chat.

Toggle to Talk

This changes the ‘Push to Talk’ interaction from a held input (microphone is ‘hot’ while the button is held down) to a toggled one.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for ‘Toggle to Talk’

Voice Chat Translation

This setting translates voice chat in different languages and displays the translated text within the Pirate Chat UI.

Text-to-Speech (Overrides Platform TTS Setting)

For players who wish to have title-specific text-to-speech enabled or disabled, this setting overrides the console-level preference.

For more information, see this Support site article: Configuring Text to Speech Game Transcription

Speech-to-Text (Overrides Platform TTS Setting)

For players who wish to have title-specific speech-to-text enabled or disabled, this setting overrides the console-level preference.

For more information, see this Support site article: Configuring Speech to Text Game Transcription

Game Language (Overrides Platform Language Setting)

For players who wish to have title-specific language preferences, this setting overrides the console-level preference.

UI Narration (‘Let Games Read to Me’ – Overrides Platform Setting)

For players who wish to have title-specific narration enabled or disabled, this setting overrides the console-level preference.

Voice Playback Rate

This setting alters the playback speed of text-to-speech and game narration.

Feedback

Check out ongoing features implemented in Sea of Thieves to let players adjust the level of physical feedback.

Visual

Learn more about features implemented in Sea of Thieves to assist players with colourblindness or other visual impairments.

Toggle HUD

This setting hides the HUD.

UI Notification Duration Setting

This setting allows players to configure how long a notification is held on-screen before disappearing.

UI Notification Text Scale

This setting allows players to adjust the text scale of UI notifications according to their personal preference.

UI Notifications in Full-Screen Menus

This setting displays in-game UI notifications in menus utilising the full screen size.

Lock Interact Prompts into View

This setting ensures that any interaction prompts are locked to the screen space, rather than displayed in-game.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for ‘Locking Interact Prompts into View’

Control Text Alignment

This setting allows players to shift text alignment in key areas between left and central alignment.

Control Text Line Height

This setting allows players to adjust text line height (spacing between lines of text) in key areas.

Auto Centre Camera

This provides a companion setting to Single Stick Navigation, constantly realigning the camera to face forward in relation to the player.

For more information, see this Support site article: Support for Play with a Single Analogue Stick, Auto Centre Camera, and Automatically Float in Water

Auto Centre Camera Delay

This provides a companion setting to Auto Centre Camera, allowing players to adjust the time delay before the camera is realigned to face forward.

Auto Centre Camera Speed

This provides a companion setting to Auto Centre Camera, allowing players to adjust the speed with which the camera is realigned to face forward.

Text Chat Scaling

This setting allows players to adjust the size of Pirate Chat notifications.

For more information, see this Support site article: Improving Text Chat Visibility

Colourblind Filters

This setting allows players to change the colour balance in Sea of Thieves to provide better contrast in various contexts. Colour balance, intensity and saturation can all be adjusted.

For more information, see this Support site article: Colourblind Support

X Marks the Spot Map Contrast

This setting swaps out the red ‘X marks the spot’ indicator on treasure maps for a high-contrast monotone variant, providing better contrast for colourblind players where treasure is buried within foliage.

Zipline Accessibility

Following the introduction of ziplines to help pirates navigate Mêlée Island, this setting has been added to reduce camera sway while riding.

Provide Your Feedback/Request a Feature

We fully support the accessibility community’s ethos of “nothing about us, without us”. If you want to help us in our continuing efforts to make Sea of Thieves as accessible as possible, we recommend signing up for our Insider Programme to gain early access to updates and provide us with feedback on future accessibility features.

If you wish to suggest improvements to existing features, request new options or have experienced a bug that has impacted your accessibility, please raise a support request with the Sea of Thieves Support team.