Accessibility and Gamification Applied to Cognitive Training and Memory Improvement

Abstract

The increase in people’s life expectancy, with the consequent projection of 1 billion elderly people in less than 10 years and of 2 billion people in 2050 –22% of the global population–, makes it necessary to develop assistive technologies that contribute to the permanence and the protagonism of the elderly in their social context. In parallel, it is observed that smartphones have brought an increase in the use of applications by the elderly. Considering this segment of users, it was verified the need to identify accessible applications focused on cognitive memory training, due to: (1) the progressive increase in the number of elderly people in the Brazilian population; (2) the decline of the cognitive functioning resulting from the natural process of aging; and (3) the lack of accessible and dynamic applications focused on cognitive training. In order to provide greater user engagement while performing tasks and to make the user experience more enjoyable, engaging and challenging, gamification has been employed in the design and development of applications. Based on this scenario, we sought to identify the main ideas regarding accessibility and gamification applied to cognitive training and the memory improvement of elderlies. For that, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted, originated from the following question: “How to create an accessible gamified application for cognitive memory training of the elderly?”. The state of the art and the few previous studies revealed the importance of researches on this subject.