Abstract
Video games that are used as teaching tools are called serious games. However, there is an important factor that is not usually considered in the design of serious games— the inclusion of people with disabilities. Inclusion can be reached only if accessibility takes on an important role for all. On the other hand, new trends have resulted in different smart devices being used in classrooms. These devices also allow for applications, such as serious games, to be used to support people’s learning process. Despite this, these applications are generally not multi-platform and do not usually consider accessibility features for people with disabilities. This paper proposes a method to develop accessible online serious games that consider people with disabilities as potential users. The method is applied in the case study of an online serious game that teaches about the architecture of a computer in a fun and entertaining way. The method also presents and describes several guidelines to improve online serious game accessibility for people with disabilities. Finally, tests are conducted with some users to gather information about the online serious game and the accessibility features included. This study has important implications for the development of learning tools that consider people with disabilities.
Highlights
Nowadays, technology is an active part of people’s daily lives, including teaching–learning processes
Another important feature is that the online serious game intends to decrease the existing gap for people with disabilities who tries video games to entertain or learn
As seen from our results, the proposed method considers the necessaries edges for the construction of an online serious game without neglecting the accessibility characteristics for people with disabilities
Summary
Technology is an active part of people’s daily lives, including teaching–learning processes. There are many people with disabilities and every year they increase in number. One billion people live with some type of disability, which corresponds to 15% of the world population [2]. It is important to emphasize that this percentage will increase due to the ageing of the world population [3] and that each one requires equal conditions at any level of their education. It is important to consider that with such a high number of possible users for software, it would be illogical to ignore the fact that accessibility features can increase the scope of an application as well as improve its versatility. Before anyone can create accessible serious games, they must understand the different categories of disability and how they impact the use of games. Accessibility is a feature that is beginning to be considered by software developers [23]
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