Accessible gaming through mainstreaming kinetic controller

Abstract

Leisure is a very important aspect in our everyday life; and gaming is one of the main ways to it. Depending on the particular situation of each person, the way of playing could be very different. Motivation, preferences, skills, knowledge are some of the factors that influences this experience. When the person has a disability, additional agents come to scene such as cognitive level and mobility. Besides the design of the game, these factors clearly affect how the person interacts with the game; its user interface. In this paper we present a tool that allows people with disabilities to play games with a normalized user interface. This tool a) manages several wireless kinetic remote controllers, e.g. the Wiimotes; b) can be configured to capture any voluntary movements users could do and c) convert them into the specific inputs required by existing adapted games. As a result, users with disabilities can experience and enjoy games that were previously inaccessible to them. © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2009.