An Arduino-based device for visually impaired people to play videogames

Abstract

Blind players have many difficulties to access video games since most of them rely on impressive graphics and immersive visual experiences. To overcome this limitation, we propose a device designed for visually impaired people to interact with virtual scenes of video games. The device has been designed considering usability, economic cost, and adaptability as main features. To ensure usability, we considered the white cane paradigm since this is the most used device by the blind community. Our device supports left to right movements and collision detection as well as actions to manipulate scene objects such as drag and drop. To enhance realism, it also integrates a library with sounds of different materials to reproduce object collision. To reduce the economic cost, we used Arduino as the basis of our development. Finally, to ensure adaptability, we created an application programming interface that supports the connection with different games engines and different scenarios. To test the acceptance of the device 12 blind participants were considered (6 males and 6 females). In addition, we created three mini-games in Unity3D that require navigation and walking as principal actions. After playing, participants filled a questionnaire related to usability and suitability to interact with games, among others. They scored well in all features without distinction among player gender and being blind from birth. The relationship between device responsiveness and user interaction has been considered satisfactory. Despite our small test sample, our main goal has been accomplished, the proposed device prototype seems to be useful to visually impaired people.