Diegetic Sound

Sound that originates from a source within the narrative world of a game, film, or virtual reality environment — meaning the characters or inhabitants of that world could theoretically hear it. Examples include a phone ringing, a dog barking, footsteps, a crackling fire, or a character speaking. Diegetic sounds contrast with non-diegetic sounds like background music or narrator voiceover, which exist outside the story world. In accessibility for Deaf and Hard-of-hearing users, diegetic sounds are particularly important to visualize because they often carry critical spatial and interactive information — alerting users to nearby dangers, indicating the location of objects, or signaling events — that directly affects gameplay, navigation, or narrative comprehension in ways that non-diegetic sounds typically do not.