Presentation at the 2012 SIIE in Andorra.

1. XIV Simposio Internacional de Informática
Educativa (SIIE 2012)
Eyes-free Interfaces for Educational
Games
Pablo Moreno-Ger
(pablom@fdi.ucm.es)
Andorra, 31/10/2012

2.  Pablo Moreno-Ger
 E-mail: pablom@fdi.ucm.es
 http://www.e-ucm.es/people/publications
 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
 E-Learning Research group
 Specialized in Serious Games (educational
games)

4.  The largest entertainment
industry
 Best movie (24h): $92M
 Best videogame (24h): $400M
 World of Warcraft $180M
per month
Are videogames just for kids?
Average player age 2011,
Entertainment Software Association

5. Educational Games are becoming
important
Science Pirates

6. In just a few seconds the
player uses …

7. In just a few seconds the
player uses …
Consequence:
Games are rather
inaccessible content!

8. Accessibility Increases the Cost, Uncertain ROI
Not fully covered. Why?
Game Developers’ Lack of Awareness
Adapted Hardware
Some Approaches
Closed captioning
Special hardware

9. Not fully covered. Why?
Game Developers’ Lack of Awareness
Adapted Hardware
Some Approaches
Closed captioning
Special hardware
Accessibility Increases the Cost, Uncertain ROI

10. Accessibility Increases the Cost, Uncertain ROI
Not fully covered. Why?
Game Developers’ Lack of Awareness
Adapted Hardware
Some Approaches
Closed captioning
Special hardware
In Education All Content
Must be Accessible!

12. Advantages
Reuse efforts (build once, use
many)
Increase visibility
Approach
Include built-in accessibility features in game
development platforms
Problems
High cost of accessibility
solutions
Game Developers’ Lack of
Awareness

13. Challenges
Variety
Scalability
Evaluation
Cost
High-level
Low-level
VS
How to make N games
accessible at once?
Is very costly! Games must be
developed (expensive)
Besides …engagement,
enjoyment, frustration … how
do you measure that?
How much can we
reduce cost and effort
needed?

14. Q1. Feasibility
• Can game development software cope with disability
automatically?
Q2. Cost reduction
• How much can effort, time, cost needed can be cut down?

16. Game Authoring Tool
 Teacher-oriented game authoring tool
No programming needed!
2D Point-and-click games & simulations
+150 countries
+30,000 downloads
10 languages
http://e-adventure-e.ucm.es

18. Reduced
Mobility
Blindness Low vision
Profiles
Interaction
Input
Point-and-
click
Voice
commands
Text
commands
Output
Sound
Text-To-
Speech
Descriptive
sounds
Graphics
Normal
mode
High
Contrast
mode

20. Users
 Blindness
 Reduced mobility
Documentary RTVE “El Mundo
se mueve conmigo” (Chapter
6)

22. • 15 users, 10 with disability profile, 60” game play
• Likert 1 to 4 questionnaire
•

23.  Example: High contrast mode
 Total: 647 art resources
 To implement high contrast mode: 53 more
 Increase of only 7.57%

24. Hypothesis: Not all blind people prefer the same
Game interfaces

25. Variable: Gaming habits
3 interfaces  3 short games
1 user w/ gaming habits, other w/o

26.  Similar to web
navigation
 The easiest, almost
trivial

28.  Short commands
formulated in natural
language
 E.g.: Grab Ball
Climb the tree
Describe the scene
Go to …

29.  Both users were able to complete the
three minigames in about 15 minutes
 Cyclical navigation system is the
easiest to use
 Sonar is the most fun interface
 Best overall interface
 Natural language commands for user
with little gaming habits
 Sonar for the user with more gaming
habits
Interface Usability Engagement Additional
Cost
Navigation (1)
Sonar (2)
Commands (3)

31.  Low-level game engine for Android
 One disability profile: blind users
 3 Games developed for evaluation
 In collaboration with 2 undergraduate students

32. 509 downloads 1281 downloads320 downloads
• Online evaluation (lack of access to end users)
• Likert 1 to 5 questionnaire
• 26 respondents so far
• 12 blind
• 24 no disability
http://goo.gl/gZiMM

33. Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11
5 (very positive) 1 2 1 1 1 1 3
4 (positive) 3 2 2 4 0 4 3
3 (neutral) 2 4 4 3 4 2 1
2 (negative) 3 2 3 2 0 3 3
1 (very negative) 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
5 (very positive)
4 (positive)
3 (neutral)
2 (negative)
1 (very negative)
3,00 3,40 3,10 3,40 3,40 3,30 3,60AVG

35. Conclusion
• Can game development software cope with disability automatically? =>
Seems so
• How much can effort, time, cost needed can be cut down? =>
Considerable reduction
Future work
• More games (cost, usability), more profiles!
• Put eAdventure accessibility modules into production
• Tackle game design barriers => Game inspection tools
Evaluation Tool 1
Evaluation Tool 2
Evaluation Tool N
…
Game
definition
(storyboard,
Game universe)
Art
Resources
Evaluation
Report

36. Thanks to …