Games for People with Developmental Disabilities
Taylor Gotfrid · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16) · doi:10.1145/2982142.2982148
Summary
This short paper (doctoral consortium contribution) presents two web-based games developed for people with developmental disabilities (DD) in collaboration with Hope Services, a California non-profit. The work addresses the gap that most existing educational applications targeting basic skills are designed for children, cost money, or do not exist for adult learners with DD. Two games were developed as web applications for tablet devices. The Concept Game tests understanding of relationship concepts (longer, shorter, fuller, emptier, etc.) by presenting ten questions where users identify which of two or three images satisfies a given relation, with progressive scaffolding when incorrect answers are given. StarBlaster is an action game designed to assess and improve cognitive skills such as causality, focus, and memory — users tap asteroids as they appear across three increasingly complex three-minute levels, where new object types are introduced but instructions remain the same, testing problem-solving abilities. The study evaluates whether these games are appropriate for the target demographic, whether in-game performance improvements transfer to real-life tasks, and identifies areas for improvement.
Key findings
This is a brief doctoral consortium paper that primarily describes the system design and research goals rather than presenting comprehensive evaluation results. The two games were designed to be age-appropriate for adults with DD while teaching basic skills that support independence in daily living. The Concept Game uses a structured error-correction approach where incorrect answers trigger visual highlighting of the correct response, and repeated incorrect answers progressively remove wrong options. StarBlaster introduces increasing complexity while maintaining the same core instruction, designed to assess whether users can generalize learned actions to new situations. The study aims to determine whether performance improvements within the games transfer to improved performance in corresponding real-life tasks, addressing a key open question in technology-assisted learning for people with DD. User evaluations suggest the games provide a viable platform for increasing independence and supplementing existing learning systems.
Relevance
This work contributes to the small but growing body of research on age-appropriate digital learning tools for adults with developmental disabilities. It complements a related full paper by Morales-Villaverde et al. (also ASSETS 2016) that developed skill-reinforcement activities for the same population in collaboration with similar organizations. The two games address different cognitive domains than the skill-reinforcement activities — relationship concepts and causality rather than recognition of numbers, letters, and money — broadening the range of skills that can be supported through accessible tablet-based applications. For practitioners, the key design insight is that games for adults with DD must balance engagement and age-appropriateness: StarBlaster uses a space-themed action format rather than childish aesthetics, while the Concept Game uses real photographs. The research question about transfer of learning from game performance to real-world tasks is particularly important for justifying the investment in accessible educational technology.
Tags: developmental disability · game accessibility · cognitive accessibility · educational technology · iPad · web application · intellectual disability