Play-Centric Designing of a Serious Game Prototype for Low Vision Children

Abstract

Currently, with the advancement of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), gaming industry becomes one of the fastest growing industries. This trend leads to development of serious games as alternative tool for creating effective learning experience. However, most educational applications such as serious games mainly used visuals such graphics and animations that pose challenges for low vision children. Visually impaired users especially children with low vision would face difficulty using the applications. They have problems to see highly visual elements of the games. Accessibility refers to how a certain software or application is accessible to disabled users. Several accessibility aspects should be considered when designing user interfaces for children with low vision. Thus, a game designed to fulfill their needs is needed. However, the challenge of serious game design is not only to consider users’ accessibility needs, but also the playability aspects as well so that the visually impaired children can enjoy playing regardless of their disabilities. This paper presents a study on designing a low fidelity serious game prototype for low vision children using play-centric design approach, focusing on playability to obtain feedback from low vision children. Then, based on users’ feedbacks, the game prototype will be refined to improve the game design.