Oooh good ideas! And totally understandable about the time crunch. I think this is a difficult game for sighted people who naturally aren't used to using their ears like this, and I don't want to exclude them so easier modes are totally a fine idea, but [and not to sound mean about it] but this is for blind gamers ultimately, not sighted ones.
Among those few blind people who do game, and the even fewer who play action games, generally we don't mind some challenge. Obviously there are blind newcomers as well, it's not just sighted people, but I've always felt that the default should be a more difficult game, with easier modes as an option, rather than the other way around. No shame to anyone who wants or needs those easier modes for any reason, but doing it the other way around can often give devs the wrong idea about our capabilities, or lead them to creating harder modes that aren't very inventive about how they make things more difficult, preferring to simply change some values rather than adding true complexity. Always easier to remove than to add IMO.