Designing Serious Games for People with Special Needs: Implications from a Survey

Abstract

Serious Games (SGs) are games that have a serious purpose besides the entertainment of the player. SGs are used in various sectors with quite promising results. One field that SGs are used is education, since SGs are considered to offer promising technology enhanced learning opportunities. This paper focuses on SGs that aim to deal with the limitations that people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have in acquiring conceptual, social, practical and cognitive skills. In particular, we present the results of a questionnaire designed to investigate the perceptions of special education professionals and teachers regarding the use of SGs in the education of people with ID and ASD. Specifically, we investigate the usefulness and the effectiveness of SGs as teaching/learning tools, the ease of use by people with ID and ASD, and the ideal age group for SGs targeted to various skills. Ninety-three special education professionals and teachers participated in the study. The participants evaluated positively SGs for all the examined skills in terms of their usefulness, usability and effectiveness. Moreover, we recorded some interesting implications that can assist the design of SGs for people with ID and ASD, as well as open issues for further research.