Be active! participatory design of accessible movement-based games

Abstract

Regular physical exercise is an essential factor for preventing chronic diseases. Activities to support physical education in schools have been increasingly used in recent years as a target to get young people interested in sports. However, for visually impaired students it is difficult to participate in traditional team sports which are widely played in physical education. To overcome this issue, we developed a design toolkit consisting of building blocks that enable visually impaired students to create and play their own movement-based games. To investigate different types of building blocks and their potential to create accessible movement-based games, we conducted two game design workshops with visually impaired students. The results show that our building blocks can successfully be used by visually impaired students to empower them to become creators of movement-based games that are both accessible and engaging. By making our design-process transparent, we further provide insights on how to implement a co-creation process in a school for visually impaired students.