Co-designed mini-games for children with visual impairment: a pilot study on their usability

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications 2023-02, Vol.82 (4), p.5291-5313
• Main Authors: Battistin, Tiziana, Dalla Pozza, Nadir, Trentin, Silvia, Volpin, Giovanni, Franceschini, Andrea, Rodà, Antonio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 1223: Information Technology for Social Good; Blindness; Children & youth; Communication; Computer & video games; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Data Structures and Information Theory; Design; Designers; Educational software; Games; Impairment; Motion capture; Motor ability; Multimedia; Multimedia Information Systems; Proprioception; Rehabilitation; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Usability; Visual impairment
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-022-13665-7

Digital games aimed at improving cognitive and/or motor-sensory skills need to be carefully designed to take into account the characteristics and needs of particular categories of users. Several novel mini-games explicitly aimed at children with visual impairment (VI) were co-designed by a multidisciplinary team which involved computer engineers and a therapy team from the Robert Hollman Foundation (Padova, Italy). These games are played by children moving within a large-scale interactive environment – i.e., a floor portion placed under a motion capture system capable of tracking one or more people – with the game linking the players movements to the audio and visual output to produce meaningful interactions. We report on a pilot study of the usability of the system involving 11 children with VI. The results allowed us to improve the system and to define a set of guidelines useful for designers and developers of similar systems.