Accessible electronic games for blind children and young people

Abstract

AbstractWe present a suite of inclusive games designed to address the needs of people with blindness or low vision. Particularly, through the employment of modern sonification strategies that achieves efficient perceptual representation of the game‐play, several audio‐games with different scenarios and application scope (entertainment and education) were developed and demonstrated. A platform called “Memor‐i studio” that allows nontechnical users (including blind ones under supervision) to create such inclusive games has also been developed. The overall presentation includes the detailed description of the outcome of the evaluation process involved children and young people aged between 7 and 20 years old from the Special Elementary School for the Blind in Athens and the Education and Rehabilitation Centre for the Blind in Athens, Greece. The description is also extended to include the design framework of Memor‐i studio. The conclusions of this evaluation are unexpectedly encouraging, showing that the specific type of inclusive games genre may be a strong alternative toward the development of accessible games for blind people, providing a secure starting point for future developments on this field.