Over the last three decades, video games have evolved from a pastime into a force of change that is transforming the way people perceive, learn about, and interact with the world around them. In addition to entertainment, games are increasingly used for other purposes such as education or health. Despite this increased interest, a significant number of people encounter barriers when playing games due to a disability. Accessibility problems may include the following: (1) not being able to receive feedback; (2) not being able to determine in-game responses; (3) not being able to provide input using conventional input devices. This paper surveys the current state-of-the-art in research and practice in the accessibility of video games and points out relevant areas for future research. A generalized game interaction model shows how a disability affects ones ability to play games. Estimates are provided on the total number of people in the United States whose ability to play games is affected by a disability. A large number of accessible games are surveyed for different types of impairments, across several game genres, from which a number of high- and low-level accessibility strategies are distilled for game developers to inform their design.

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Game accessibility: a survey

Eye Tracking for User Experience Design explores the many applications of eye tracking to better understand how users view and interact with technology. Ten leading experts in eye tracking discuss how they have taken advantage of this new technology to understand, design, and evaluate user experience. Real-world stories are included from these experts who have used eye tracking during the design and development of products ranging from information websites to immersive games. They also explore recent advances in the technologywhich tracks how users interact with mobile devices, large-screen displays and video game consoles. Methods for combining eye tracking with other research techniques for a more holistic understanding of the user experience are discussed. This is an invaluable resource to those who want to learn how eye tracking can be used to better understand and design for their users. Includes highly relevant examples and information for those who perform user research and design interactive experiences Written by numerous experts in user experience and eye tracking. Highly relevant to anyone interested in eye tracking & UX design Features contemporary eye tracking research emphasizing the latest uses of eye tracking technology in the user experience industry.

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Eye Tracking in User Experience Design

Currently, few studies focus on analysing the degree of the Player eXperience PX in video games. Video games have now become interactive entertainment systems with a high economic impact on society; these are interactive systems characterised by their subjectivity, which differ from other systems in that their main objective is to entertain and amuse the user player. This work discusses the analysis and evaluation of the User eXperience UX in interactive entertainment systems, exploring how usability, given its definition, objectives and the fact it is one of the main dimensions of UX, is not sufficient to characterise the PX, giving rise to a new concept: Playability. In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis and evaluation of the UX in video games. The results show the need and importance of a framework to help us understand and measure the experience that players feel using these types of interactive systems, in order to improve the experience during play time. The proposed framework characterises the experience using attributes to identify and properties to measure UX. It thus provides a multifaceted analysis mechanism to assess the impact of the gaming experience and its relationship with the elements of a video game. We therefore present a system to represent UX based on this framework, with the aim of ensuring and measuring a satisfactory experience of the entertainment system. Finally, we discuss a practical experiment in which an evaluation of the playability of a commercial video game was carried out using the methods proposed in this work.

Playability: analysing user experience in video games

Les Directrius per a l'accessibilitat al contingut web tenen l'objectiu de promoure l'accessibilitat del contingut web per a persones amb discapacitats, pero tambe d'ajudar a trobar la informacio dins el web i facilitar-ne l'us a tot tipus d'usuaris. Son directrius amb principis i idees de disseny que no expliquen tecniques concretes de codi ni estan actualitzades a la darrera versio; de programari o maquinari existent. Aquestes directrius han estat publicades per la Iniciativa d'Accessibilitat al web (WAI) del Word Wide Web Consortium i es complementen amb altres directrius i documents del mateix grup. Un grup de professors de la Facultat de Biblioteconomia a la Universitat de Barcelona han realitzat la traduccio al catala

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC Lizenz (NamensnennungNicht-kommerziell) zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.de Terms of use: This document is made available under a CC BY-NC Licence (Attribution-NonCommercial). For more Information see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Avatars and computer-mediated communication: a review of the definitions, uses, and effects of digital representations

Very few video games have been designed or adapted to allow people with vision impairment to play. Music/rhythm games however are particularly suitable for such people as they are perfectly capable of perceiving audio signals. Guitar Hero is a popular rhythm game yet it is not accessible to the visually impaired as it relies on visual stimuli. This paper explores replacing visual stimuli with haptic stimuli as a viable strategy to make games accessible. We developed a glove that transforms visual information into haptic feedback using small pager motors attached to the tip of each finger. This allows a blind player to play Guitar Hero. Several tests have been conducted and despite minor changes to the gameplay, visually impaired players are able to play the game successfully and enjoy the challenge the game provides. The results of the study also give valuable insights on how to make mainstream games blind-accessible.

Blind hero: enabling guitar hero for the visually impaired

The immersive graphics, large amount of user-generated content, and social interaction opportunities offered by popular virtual worlds, such as Second Life, could eventually make for a more interactive and informative World Wide Web. Unfortunately, virtual worlds are currently not accessible to users who are visually impaired. This paper presents the work on developing TextSL, a client for Second life that can be accessed with a screen reader. Users interact with TextSL using a command-based interface, which allows for performing a plethora of different actions on large numbers of objects and avatars; characterizing features of such virtual worlds. User studies confirm that a command-based interface is a feasible approach towards making virtual worlds accessible, as it allows screen reader users to explore Second Life, communicate with other avatars, and interact with objects as well as sighted users. Command-based exploration and object interaction is significantly slower, but communication can be performed with the same efficiency as in the Second Life viewer. We further identify that at least 31% of the objects in Second Life lack a descriptive name, which is a significant barrier towards making virtual worlds accessible to users who are visually impaired.

TextSL: a command-based virtual world interface for the visually impaired

Over the last three decades, video games have evolved from an obscure pastime to a force of change that is transforming the way people perceive, learn about, and interact with the world around them. Video games are not only a popular form of entertainment, but are increasingly being used for other purposes, such as education and health, as well. Despite this increased interest, a significant number of people encounter barriers when playing games, due to a disability. 
This dissertation, and our identification of a generalized game interaction model, helps provide an understanding of how video games can be designed and modified to improve their accessibility features. An estimated 11% of U.S. population are discovered to play video games with sub-optimal gaming experience because of a disability. A large number of existing, accessible games have been studied and analyzed to provide insights and understanding as to the importance of encouraging universal access in this field. Though our survey work covered several types of disabilities, the bulk of this dissertation focuses on improving accessibility for the visually impaired. Specific design strategies are illustrated and proven by the development and evaluation of actual blind-accessible games. 
Case studies are presented for each of the three games we developed during the research period. We developed the first mainstream game using haptic feedback. The first screen-reader-accessible virtual world interface is built to explore more strategies for developing blind-accessible games. A third game, developed for sighted users, demonstrates that data collected during gameplay can be used for other purposes including improving accessibility in another game (Second Life). Furthermore, user studies were conducted that focus on the enjoyment, educational, and social interaction aspects of these games while evaluating their ease of access.

Towards generalized accessibility of video games for the visually impaired

We identified that virtual worlds that rely on user generated content often lack accurate metadata for their objects. The apparent lack of metadata is a problem for users who are visually impaired, as they rely upon textual descriptions of objects to be present for accessing virtual worlds using assistive technology, such as a screen reader or tactile display. This paper presents a scavenger-hunt game for the virtual world of Second Life -called SEEK-N-TAG- that allows sighted users to label objects as well as collaboratively develop a taxonomy for objects. SEEK-N-TAG aims to build a set of objects with accurate metadata that can be used as training data for an automatic object classifier. Our approach is novel due to its internal approach where the game is implemented in the virtual world itself as to improve its own accessibility. A user study with 10 participants revealed that labeling objects with a game is more effective and accurate than manually naming objects.

Bei Yuan

Papers

Game accessibility: a survey

Blind hero: enabling guitar hero for the visually impaired

TextSL: a command-based virtual world interface for the visually impaired

Towards generalized accessibility of video games for the visually impaired

Seek-n-Tag: a game for labeling and classifying virtual world objects