Collaborative Accessible Gameplay with One-Switch Interfaces

Gaming, both traditional and electronic, is a key activity for children of all ages, enabling them to learn skills, socialize with friends and family, and entertain themselves. Unfortunately, children with disabilities encounter several accessibility barriers that prevent them to participate in mainstream games, unless some adaptations are made to the interfaces. This paper tackles the problem of enabling children with severe motor disabilities to participate in multiplayer games with their peers, thus providing opportunities for socialization and fun inside families or classrooms. We present a collaborative two-player puzzle game, based on several levels of labyrinths that need to be solved by moving the two players' characters. The characteristics of the game (such as the absence of time constraints, and the need of the players to coordinate their moves) were defined in a study group involving computer scientists, psychologists and speech therapists. The game was designed and implemented to be controllable with a single-switch interface, thanks to the GNomon interaction method. A preliminary evaluation has been conducted with 5 couples of able players (mostly children) who enjoyed the game and gave us useful insights.