Changes to deafness and blindness traits

[JohnnyJohn]

, deaf people I think can put their departmental headset in their pocket to hear on it, then swap to talk and swap back to hear.

Clever. Noting this one down.

To me, that's a shitty downside though. It's a less challenging one, and more so just a game harming one.

I'm struggling to parse this so I might be missing something, sorry. You've proposed a change to the trait items that reduce the challenge, but you want it to be as challenging? I'm not following what exactly you want here.

Well, the trait cutting job equipment isn't fair challenge, it just hurts your ability to play the game. Imagine a deaf captain whose headset was deleted and replaced by one that could only access general. Can't coordinate with department heads or hear about revs, nothing like that. Or imagine a blind security officer, unable to use sechud. That's not some challenge to overcome, that just hurts the gameplay.

To make my point, think about the nervous trait. In exchange for +1 trait point, your character now stuns when faced with things like blood and whatnot. To deal with this challenge, you have to either learn to avoid frightening situations or deal with the stuns, or learn to keep CBD in your system when things get bad. With the stinky trait, you have to manage a stricter hygiene stat and learn to bathe often, or deal with the consequences. That's a fair challenge for a fair reward.

But if you look at blind and deaf, that's absent. There's no negative gameplay quirk to work around and learn to manage, you just get vital job equipment deleted. Like, "fuck you, have your functionality cut."
The difference in what I propose is that you still have your job equipment, the challenge comes from not losing it. You have control over it, instead of just a permanent fuck-you.