Co-designed mini-games for children with severe visual impairment

Abstract

Digital games can be designed and used to improve many specific skills, related to both cognitive and sensory-motor goals. A set of novel mini-games explicitly aimed to children with severe visual impairments are presented. The games are played by moving within the range of a large-scale interactive environment, i.e. a floor portion placed under a motion capture system which allows the tracking of one or more people. It is then possible to link the players movements to audio and graphic output, producing meaningful interactions. The games are the results of a design process that involved computer engineers and a multidisciplinary therapy team from the R. Hollman Foundation (Padova, Italy). A set of guidelines useful to designers and developers are presented as a result of the co-design process.