Principles for Evaluating Usability in Multimodal Games for People Who Are Blind

Abstract

Multimodal video games designed for increasing cognition of people who are blind should be friendly and pleasant to use, instead of adding complexity to the interaction, leading people to acquire cognitive skills while interacting. There are specific issues that make multimodal usability evaluation different from the evaluation of traditional user interfaces in the context of improving cognition of people who are blind. In this context, identifying how well the Usability Evaluation Methods (UEM) meet the evaluation criteria to assess multimodal games for people who are blind is necessary. In this paper, we conducted an expert opinion survey to analyze how usability evaluation has been done by researchers and practitioners in this field. As a result, we propose the PrincipLes for Evaluating Usability of Multimodal Video Games for People who are Blind (PLUMB), a set of evaluation good practices that should be observed while planning the evaluation. This paper builds on the literature about how multimodal features affect people who are blind interaction with multimodal interfaces by focusing on their practical evaluation.