Educational Digital Games and Computational Thinking for students with Intellectual Disabilities - Guidelines for accessibility

Abstract

Computational Thinking (CT) refers to cognitive skills of logical reasoning, abstraction, and problem-solving that can be automated. Students with intellectual disabilities have cognitive deficits that can be improved by working the CT. To ensure that students develop this ability it is important to use appropriate and accessible tools for everyone and educational digital games are presented as a possibility to teach CT in a fun and engaging way. The present study aims to understand the relationship between the learning of children with intellectual disabilities and the existing guidelines for the development of accessible educational digital games, to promote CT for them. Also, a set of these guidelines is provided for designing educational digital games aimed at students with intellectual disabilities.