MathMelodies: Inclusive design of a didactic game to practice mathematics

Abstract

Tablet computers are becoming a common tool to support learning since primary school. Indeed, many didactic applications are already available on online stores. Most of these applications engage the child by immersing the educational purpose of the software within an entertaining environment, often in the form of a game with sophisticated graphic and interaction. Unfortunately, this makes most of these applications inaccessible to visually impaired children. In this contribution we present MathMelodies, an iPad application that supports math learning in primary school and that is designed to be accessible also to visually impaired children. We describe the main challenges we faced during the development of this didactic application that is both engaging and accessible. The application, currently publicly available, is collecting enthusiastic reviews from teachers, who often contribute with precious insight for improving the solution. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.