Understanding the perceptions and experiences of the deafblind community about digital games

Abstract

Purpose

Participation and accessibility issues faced by gamers with multi-sensory disabilities are themes yet to be fully understood by accessible technology researchers. In this work, we examine the personal experiences and perceptions of individuals with deafblindness who play games despite their disability, as well as the reasons that lead some of them to stop playing games.

Materials and methods

We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with individuals living with deafblindness in five European countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Greece and Sweden.

Results

Participants stated that reasons for playing games included them being a fun and entertaining hobby, for socialization and meeting others, or for occupying the mind. Reasons for stop playing games included essentially accessibility issues, followed by high cognitive demand, changes in gaming experience due their disability, financial reasons, or because the accessible version of a specific game was not considered as fun as the original one.

Conclusions

We identified that a considerable number of individuals with deafblindness enjoy playing casual mobile games such as Wordfeud and Sudoku as a pastime activity. Despite challenging accessibility issues, games provide meaningful social interactions to players with deafblindness. Finally, we introduce a set of user-driven recommendations for making digital games more accessible to players with a diverse combination of sensory abilities.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION

• Digital games were considered a fun and entertaining hobby by participants with deafblindness. Furthermore, participants play games for socialization and meeting others, or for occupying the mind.

• Digital games provide meaningful social interactions and past time to persons with deafblindness.

• On top of accessibility implications, our findings draw attention to the importance of the social element of gaming for persons with deafblindness.

• Based on interviews, we introduce a set of user-driven recommendations for making digital games more accessible to players with a diverse combination of sensory abilities.

Keywords:

• Accessible games
• deaf studies
• visual impairments
• multisensory disabilities
• assistive technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the work done by different SUIT CEYES project members during the interviews. In particular, the authors would like to thank Lea Buchweitz, James Gay, Ruben Gouveia, Stratos Kontopoulos, Ioulietta Lazarou, Myrthe Plaisier, Astrid Kappers, Nasrine Olson, Elena Maceviciute, Adriana Atkinson and Sarah Woodin for their contributions. The SUIT CEYES project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 780814.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number 780814.