game accessibilty in special education
DESCRIPTION
These are the slides for my talk at the Games for Health Game Accessibility Day conference. There are notes attached to the original by the way, so hopefully you can view those for reference. Updated May 28 with better notes.TRANSCRIPT
“It is simplicity that is difficult to make.” - Bertholdt Brecht
Player Factors and Reality Memory Problem Solving Attention Span Reading, linguistics and verbal
comprehension Math comprehension Visual comprehension Physical disability
Some Bad Assumptions
The player is “different”
Players don’t know what games are
“It’s a 3 year old in the body of a teenager”
You need to come up with new design rules
Some Good Assumptions
The player is “normal”, with some factors very magnified
The player knows what games are
The player knows their age, so treat them with respect and dignity
Common sense design rules are fine
User Input Realities
Some people use single switch input
Some can use the mouse or maybe a touch screen
Some have no fine motor skills
“Twitch” games are out because timing is an issue
Game Output Realities
No reading
No complex or sequential tasks
Consistency in all things
Highlight important things, mute the unimportant
Learning is Games is Learning You can learn a lot about games by
looking at learning (and vice versa)
Mastery, assessment, engagement, and lots of other concepts are shared
Read up on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Design with Extreme Purpose You don’t need to come up with new
design rules
Take what you know to work to extremes
Really do what you know to be true
There is no fallback
Enable Player Mastery
Mastery of the user interaction methods
Mastery of the user interface
Mastery of the game
Mastery of frustration
Approaches to Mastery
Learning from failure doesn’t work – consider a zero-failure approach
Repeat, repeat, repeat and then repeat again
Teach UI mastery first, game second
Sometimes mastering the UI is the game itself
Patience is Golden
The player won’t master the game overnight
Allow for lots and lots of repetition for gaining mastery
Watch for emergent gameplay
Don’t be frustrated by the student
In a Nutshell
Take all you know and can learn about games, UI, user interaction and human nature
Magnify it by many orders of magnitude
Aim to enable mastery
Work from the standpoint of patience
Some Game Challenges
Create cooperative experiences for all players of all abilities
Come up with affordable controllers
Stop making dumb games
Start making good games