Creator

Lau Lok In, School of Creative Media

About the Work

Visually Impaired People (VIP) are very interested playing video games on their smartphones and wish to engage with others through this platform. After determining that there is limited choice for VIPs currently available in the market, developing a mobile game with an accessible interface for VIPs became the main intent of Playground+. The game is intended to be playable and enjoyable by people without visual impairment as well, such that it can become a common point of interaction between the groups.

Mechanism

Playground+ is a multiplayer ball game with a focus on the use of surround sound. We have noted that VIPs are familiar with the built-in VoiceOver function in iOS, which helps facilitate accessibility of the device to VIPs with a specific set of gestures and interactions. Users could browse the screen with narrative audio output by a single tap and drag or they may swipe to listen to the option on the screen sequentially. Users could also interact with the interface of the device by other designated gestures. Since the target users are familiar with VoiceOver and using touchscreens on smartphones, the game is also designed for touch control on a mobile device to take advantage of this. Other than having accessible gameplay and interfaces utilising touch control, the game also uses surround sound mixing technology to provide auditory feedback about the state of the game. Players need to pay attention to sounds to both determine the location of game objects and react to them.