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BraillePlay: educational smartphone games for blind children

Published: 20 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

There are many educational smartphone games for children, but few are accessible to blind children. We present BraillePlay, a suite of accessible games for smartphones that teach Braille character encodings to promote Braille literacy. The BraillePlay games are based on VBraille, a method for displaying Braille characters on a smartphone. BraillePlay includes four games of varying levels of difficulty: VBReader and VBWriter simulate Braille flashcards, and VBHangman and VBGhost incorporate Braille character identification and recall into word games. We evaluated BraillePlay with a longitudinal study in the wild with eight blind children. Through logged usage data and extensive interviews, we found that all but one participant were able to play the games independently and found them enjoyable. We also found evidence that some children learned Braille concepts. We distill implications for the design of games for blind children and discuss lessons learned.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ASSETS '14: Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility
October 2014
378 pages
ISBN:9781450327206
DOI:10.1145/2661334
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 20 October 2014

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Author Tags

  1. accessibility
  2. blind
  3. children
  4. educational games

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ASSETS '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 106 submissions, 27%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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  • (2024)An interactive self-learning system using smartphone app and cards enabling braille touch experience for blindnessBritish Journal of Visual Impairment10.1177/02646196241261629Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Exploring Blind and Low-Vision Youth’s Digital Access Needs in School: Toward Accessible Instructional TechnologiesACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/368880517:3(1-31)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Experiences from Running a Voice-Based Education Platform for Children and Teachers with Visual ImpairmentsACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36773232:3(1-35)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2024
  • (2024)NoteBlock: Prototype Design of Music Learning Experience for Blind and Low Vision Children in Preschool AgesCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3677584(56-60)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Towards Designing Digital Learning Tools for Students with Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairments: Leveraging Insights from Teachers of the Visually ImpairedProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675636(1-18)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)"It's an independent living skill, but covered with fun!": Prompting At-Home Skill Development for Children with Vision ImpairmentProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675626(1-14)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2024)A Multilingual Handwriting Learning System for Visually Impaired PeopleIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.335378112(10521-10534)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2024)Accessible learning objects: a systematic literature reviewUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-023-01025-723:4(1931-1945)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
  • (2024)Development of an Acoustic and Online VR Game to Improve Social Connectivity and Awareness About Tourist Places in Visually Impaired PeopleThe Smart IoT Blueprint: Engineering a Connected Future10.1007/978-3-031-63103-0_23(219-225)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Raspberry Pi-Driven Affordable Image-To-Braille Converter for Visually Impaired UsersAdvancements in Smart Computing and Information Security10.1007/978-3-031-59107-5_15(225-242)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
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