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Beyond Fun: Players’ Experiences of Accessible Rehabilitation Gaming for Spinal Cord Injury

Published: 17 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Rehabilitation gaming—play of digital games that incorporate rehabilitation exercises—is a well-known and broadly applicable way to make physical rehabilitation more fun. It can motivate patients with spinal cord injury to engage in exercises that they find boring and can be as effective as traditional physiotherapy. However, patients’ needs are not only physical. Rehabilitation also needs to help patients overcome the psychological trauma of spinal cord injury. For patients coping with disability, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, or a loss of identity, rehabilitation gaming may provide benefits beyond making exercise more fun. We asked six participants with spinal cord injury to play three cycling-based rehabilitation games to determine how play might change their experiences of rehabilitation. They said that rehabilitation games may be able to help patients to actively participate in their rehabilitation, help them to rediscover who they are, and show them a better future living with spinal cord injury.

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  • (2024)A Comprehensive Review of Current Assistive Technology Research for Paralyzed PeopleCurrent and Future Trends on Intelligent Technology Adoption10.1007/978-3-031-61463-7_15(287-305)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024

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cover image ACM Conferences
ASSETS '21: Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
October 2021
730 pages
ISBN:9781450383066
DOI:10.1145/3441852
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Published: 17 October 2021

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Author Tags

  1. Accessibility
  2. Digital games
  3. Rehabilitation
  4. Spinal cord injury

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  • Refereed limited

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  • NSERC CREATE Research and Education in Accessibility, Design, and Innovation (READi)

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ASSETS '21 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 134 submissions, 27%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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  • (2024)A Comprehensive Review of Current Assistive Technology Research for Paralyzed PeopleCurrent and Future Trends on Intelligent Technology Adoption10.1007/978-3-031-61463-7_15(287-305)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024

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