1,394 research outputs found

    Ctrl Shift: How Crip Alt Ctrl Designers Change the Game and Reimagine Access

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    My journey as a disabled arts practitioner has been one of invention, hacking, and re-imagining what input systems could be. I have created my own modalities for creating work, rather than relying on commercially available options. This is a common practice within the disabled community, as individuals often modify and hack their surroundings to make them more usable. For example, ADAPT activists took sledgehammers to smash curb cuts and poured curb ramps with cement bags, ultimately leading to the widespread adoption of curb cuts as a standard architectural feature. As Yergeau notes, this type of "criptastic hacking" represents a creative resistance.(Yergeau, 2012) My interfaces and art projects are a combination of science fiction world-building, technology prototyping, and experimentation with novel ways of experiencing the world that work for my ability. I have been building interactive objects for over 20 years, and my bespoke controller games are both pieces I find comfortable to play and conceptual proposals that I share with the games community to spark consideration for alternative ways of interacting with games culture. This interdisciplinary design research herein crosses a range of disciplines, drawing inspiration from radical forms of cognitive science, games studies, feminist studies, HCI, crip technoscience, radical science fiction, disability studies, and making practices. What has emerged through studying my own practice and the practices of others during this research is a criptastic design framework for creating playful experiences. My research aims to gain a deeper understanding of the ways that hacking and remaking the world manifests as modifications to the design process itself. I created four versions of a physical alt ctrl game and conducted a design study with disabled artists and alt ctrl game creators. The game, Bot Party, was developed through a series of public exhibitions and explored my relationship between criptastic bespoke interface design and embodied experiences of group play. Bot Party involves physical interaction among players in groups to understand my own ways of designing, while the study looks three other disabled designers to understand the ways in which their process is similar or different to my own. By conducting this work, I aim to contribute to the larger conversation within the games studies community about the importance of accessibility and inclusivity in game design. The results highlight the need for continued exploration and development in this area, specifically in design methods. The study’s findings as they relate to my own practice revealed the importance of considering a set of values and design processes in relation to disability when creating games and playful experiences. With this perspective, I propose an initial framework that outlines possible key themes for disabled game designers. Using values as a starting point for creating deeply accessible games, this framework serves as a starting point for future research into accessible game design. This framework seeks to subvert the notion that accessibility is a list of UX best practices, audio descriptions, captions, and haptic additions and moves towards embedding within game design the values and practices used by disabled designers from the outset of the creative process. Access can be a creative framework. An important point to make is that my efforts to do a PhD resist the academic ableism limiting the participation of people who are not from a normative background. The act of creating this PhD has eaten at the edge of my ability, and the research here was often conducted in pain under extremely trying circumstances. This perspective is relevant because it often informed my design choices and thinking. Additionally, it was conducted at a university where I experienced active discrimination from members of staff who simply refused to believe in disabilities they could not see, and in one case writing down my disability was, “self-ascribed.” To work, I had to move outside the academy and seek out workshops which gave me accessible, ergonomic equipment as is discussed in the Bot Party section. This bears mentioning because it reflects on how threatening disabilities can be within academic settings and how even providing basic levels of accessibility remains a challenge for academic institutions. The above framework could benefit academia if used to redesign postgraduate academic research practices within the academy from a place of Crip-informed pedagogy. This is future work that this academic researcher hopes to explore in depth within their academic journey. It is important to note, much of the most relevant research to this thesis around disability studies and technology has emerged in recent years and as a result, was included iteratively in the literature review. It has informed the third study and my iterative design practice as part of the journey; however, I began this work before much of the writing in the literature review existed, including the creation of Bot Party’s first iterations. Finding this scholarship and these authors has been a kinning. Kinship, according to Gavin Van Horn, “can be considered a noun…shared and storied relations and memories that inhere in people and places; or more metaphorical imaginings that unite us to faith traditions, cultures, countries, or the planet…Perhaps this kinship-in-action should be called kinning.” (Horn et al., 2021) Kinning happened throughout this work and this thesis served me as a place for discovery, contemplation, and empowerment. It is my hope sections of it will serve this function for others within my community. I found kinship with other authors working in the field of disability studies and technology, particularly with Alison Kafer, who offers a critique of Donna Haraway's cyborg in her book "Feminist Queer Crip." (Kafer, 2013) Kafer's work highlights the limitations of Haraway's cyborg as a figure of empowerment for marginalized bodies and identities, and instead advocates for a crip-queer-feminist perspective on technology and embodiment. Additionally, the author has also found resonance in the work of Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsh, whose work in disability studies and HCI has been instrumental in shaping this research. Specifically, their concept of "crip technoscience" has been a key framework for understanding technology creation by disabled technologists. (Hamraie and Fritsch, 2019) Overall, it is my hope that this thesis will serve as a generative resource for others within the community on this journey, particularly for those who are working towards a more inclusive and intersectional understanding of technology and embodiment

    KINECTWheels: wheelchair-accessible motion-based game interaction

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    The increasing popularity of full-body motion-based video games creates new challenges for game accessibility research. Many games strongly focus on able-bodied persons and require players to move around freely. To address this problem, we introduce KINECTWheels, a toolkit that facilitates the integration of wheelchair-based game input. Our library can help game designers to integrate wheelchair input at the development stage, and it can be configured to trigger keystroke events to make off-the-shelf PC games wheelchair-accessible

    Accessibility in PC Action/Adventure Games

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    Segons la Convenció sobre els Drets de les Persones amb Discapacitat, les Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació han de ser accessibles. Per això, l'objectiu de l'estudi és avaluar el grau d'accessibilitat de 50 jocs d'acció/aventura per a PC publicats en els últims 10 anys (2010-2022). Per aconseguir-ho, es va crear una llista de comprovació d'opcions d'accessibilitat en conformitat a les normes, lleis i recomanacions, com les directrius per a videojocs i l'estàndard EN 301 549. El jocs es van seleccionar segons la disponibilitat, franquícies amb diversos títols i popularitat. Cada títol es va avaluar per comprovar si es complien les directrius. Es va calcular un percentatge a partir de la divisió del nombre de directrius d'accessibilitat presents entre les directrius possibles i aplicables. Els resultats revelen que el 44% dels jocs segueixen directrius d'accessibilitat, el 81% inclou directrius per a persones amb discapacitats cognitives, el 44% per a motores i de la parla, el 38% per a les auditives i el 25% per a les visuals. Els jocs examinats no són totalment accessibles, però la majoria compleix amb les directrius cognitives i els nivells bàsics d'accessibilitat. Futures vies d'investigació inclouen avaluacions d'accessibilitat multiplataforma de diferents gèneres i estudis.Según la Convención Internacional sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones deben ser accesibles. Por ello, el objetivo del estudio fue descubrir el grado de accesibilidad de cincuenta juegos de acción/aventura para PC publicados en los últimos doce años (2010-2022). Para lograrlo, se creó una lista de comprobación de opciones y características conforme a las directrices para videojuegos, leyes y normas vigentes, como EN 301 549 en Europa. Los juegos se seleccionaron según la disponibilidad, franquicias con varios títulos y grado de popularidad. Cada título se evaluó para comprobar si se cumplían las directrices vigentes. Se obtuvo un porcentaje de accesibilidad al dividir el número de directrices disponibles entre las posibles y aplicables a cada título. Los resultados revelan que el 44% de los juegos siguen directrices, el 81% incluyen pautas para personas con discapacidades cognitivas, el 44% para las motoras y del habla, el 38% para las auditivas y el 25% para las visuales. Los juegos examinados no son totalmente accesibles, pero la mayoría cumple con directrices de accesibilidad cognitivas y niveles básicos de accesibilidad. Futuras vías de investigación incluyen evaluaciones de accesibilidad multiplataforma de diferentes géneros y estudios.According to the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) must be accessible. For this reason, the objective of this study was to discover the accessibility level of fifty PC action/adventure games released in the last twelve years (2010-2022). To this aim, a checklist of options and features following current guidelines (Game Accessibility Guidelines (GAG) and Xbox Guidelines), laws (Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 from the United States), and standards (European EN 301 549) was created. The games were selected based on availability, iterations, and popularity. They were reviewed and played to verify if the accessibility features were available. An accessibility percentage was obtained by dividing the number of present GAG by the number of possible GAG applicable to each title. The results revealed that 44% of the titles follow guidelines, 81% include guidelines for people with cognitive disabilities, 44% for motor and speech disabilities, 38% for auditory, and 25% for visual. The examined games are not entirely accessible, but most comply with guidelines addressing the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and basic accessibility levels. Further research lines include multiplatform accessibility assessments from different genres, publishers, and studios

    Activity-promoting gaming systems in exercise and rehabilitation

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    Commercial activity-promoting gaming systems provide a potentially attractive means to facilitate exercise and rehabilitation. The Nintendo Wii, Sony EyeToy, Dance Dance Revolution, and Xbox Kinect are examples of gaming systems that use the movement of the player to control gameplay. Activity-promoting gaming systems can be used as a tool to increase activity levels in otherwise sedentary gamers and also be an effective tool to aid rehabilitation in clinical settings. Therefore, the aim of this current work is to review the growing area of activity-promoting gaming in the context of exercise, injury, and rehabilitation
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