POINTS -- Playful objects for inclusive, personalized movement games
This is an incremental position paper that explores ideas for making physical activity games more inclusive for visually impaired students, without presenting new empirical results.
The paper addresses the lack of exercise among children and adolescents, particularly for visually impaired individuals, by proposing playful digital objects and wearable technology to design personalized exertion games that foster inclusion through tailored player roles.
Promoting exercise and promoting fun in sport and activity is a common goal of schools. However, children and adolescents do not exercise enough, which can favor a number of chronic illnesses. Exercise and sports often require coordination of visual perception and reaction, which is an additional barrier for visually impaired (blind and partially sighted) people. Due to their highly motivating appeal, games promoting physical activity (exertion games) have become increasingly popular. Although accessible exertion games have been developed, they do not consider the different abilities of players. Especially in team sports player roles that consider individual abilities can foster inclusion. To personalize roles and assign certain abilities to players, wearable technology can play an important role. In this position paper we present ideas how digital objects can be used to design exertion games for visually impaired students and we reflect how wearable technology can be used for personalized player roles.