Pedagogical and Accessibility Guidelines for Digital Educational Games

• Gilvan Ferreira Alves Junior UFMS
• Miguel Sobreira de Albuquerque UFMS
• Lucas Henrique Alves Borth UFMS
• Michele dos Santos Soares UFMS
• Awdren Fontão UFMS
• Débora Maria Barroso Paiva UFMS

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbsi.2025.246482

Resumo

Context: The gaming industry in Brazil has grown progressively in recent years, accompanied by an increase in the demand for accessibility. Problem: However, the development of accessible products has not advanced at the same pace, resulting in a significant gap. Problems such as the lack of audio description and subtitles are critical barriers that affect the access, learning, and entertainment provided by digital games. These problems contribute to the social exclusion of people with disabilities. Solution: Given this scenario, this paper presents pedagogical and accessibility guidelines for online educational games. Information Systems Theory: Considering the BYU library, this work fits into the context of Equity Theory, whose concept is related to the willingness to equally recognize the rights of each individual. Method: These guidelines evolved into the design and implementation stages of a game, which was tested by a blind user. Results: The evaluation resulted in mostly positive feedback. Opportunities for improving the proposal were also identified, which will be considered in new phases of the research. Despite the challenges encountered in relation to the system, including hardware, software, and internet issues during the evaluation, the work was successful in adapting the game to improve accessibility, allowing the blind user to play and perform all the tasks. Contribution: Mainly, this result reinforces the importance of incorporating accessibility guidelines into digital products and contributes to progress towards the inclusion of all people in the context of digital games.

Palavras-chave: Acessibility, Digital Games, Guidelines

Referências

Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark. 2014. A game design vocabulary: Exploring the foundational principles behind good game design. Pearson Education.

Gisele Barbosa. 2014. Manual do professor para utilização de objetos de aprendizagem. Produto Educacional de Mestrado apresentada ao Programa de Mestrado Profissional em Educação Matemática. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora. [link]

Pedro Santos Bartolomé and Tom Van Gerven. 2022. From the classroom to the game: applying available pedagogical guidelines in game-based learning. In 2022 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). 466–472. DOI: 10.1109/EDUCON52537.2022.9766475

Jen Beeston, Christopher Power, Paul Cairns, and Mark Barlet. 2018. Accessible player experiences (APX): The players. In International conference on computers helping people with special needs. Springer, 245–253.

Brasil. 2015. Lei 13.146/2015 (Estatuto da Pessoa com Deficiência). [link]. Acesso em: 30 de agosto de 2021.

Oficina brasileira. [n. d.]. Desenho universal para livros didáticos. [link].

Paul Cairns, Christopher Power, Mark Barlet, and Greg Haynes. 2019. Future design of accessibility in games: A design vocabulary. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 131 (2019), 64–71.

Jorge Chueca, Javier Verón, Jaime Font, Francisca Pérez, and Carlos Cetina. 2024. The consolidation of game software engineering: A systematic literature review of software engineering for industry-scale computer games. Information and Software Technology 165 (2024), 107330.

Fred D Davis. 1989. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS quarterly (1989), 319–340.

Camila Dias De Oliveira, Renata Pontin De Mattos Fortes, and Ellen Francine Barbosa. 2020. Teaching-learning practices and methods for the elderly: Support for pedagogical and accessibility guidelines. Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE 2020-October (2020). DOI: 10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9273974

Ana Paula do Carmo Marcheti Ferraz and Renato Vairo Belhot. 2010. Taxonomia de Bloom: revisão teórica e apresentação das adequações do instrumento para definição de objetivos instrucionais. Gestão & Produção (2010). DOI: 10.1590/S0104-530X2010000200015

Noor Hammad, Frank Elavsky, Sanika Moharana, Jessie Chen, Seyoung Lee, Patrick Carrington, Dominik Moritz, Jessica Hammer, and Erik Harpstead. 2024. Exploring The Affordances of Game-Aware Streaming to Support Blind and Low Vision Viewers: A Design Probe Study. In The 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 1–13.

S. Harper and Y. Yesilada. 2008. Web Accessibility: A Foundation for Research. Springer (2008).

ISO. 2011. Systems and Software Engineering - Systems and Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) - System and Software Quality Models. [link].

Ista Maharsi. 2018. Developing EFL Students’ Learning Reflection and Self-Regulated Learning through Google Classroom. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (2018), 62 – 66. DOI: 10.1145/3234825.3234841 Cited by: 3.

M. Paciello. 2000. Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities. CMP books, CMP Media LLC (2000).

H. Petrie, A. Savva, and C. Power. 2015. Towards a unified definition of web accessibility. In Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 1–13 (2015).

F Provost. 2013. Data Science for Business: What you need to know about data mining and data-analytic thinking. Vol. 355. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Eliseo Reategui and Mateus David Finco. 2010. Proposta de Diretrizes para Avaliação de Objetos de Aprendizagem Considerando Aspectos Pedagógicos e Técnicos. Revista Novas Tecnologias na Educação 8, 3 (dez. 2010). DOI: 10.22456/1679-1916.18066

C. D. de O. Sestito. 2022. Diretrizes pedagógicas e de acessibilidade para aplicações educacionais móveis com foco em usuários idosos. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências de Computação e Matemática Computacional) - Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação. Universidade de São Paulo.

Milene Selbach Silveira and Mára Lúcia Fernandes Carneiro. 2012. Diretrizes para a Avaliação da Usabilidade de Objetos de Aprendizagem. In Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação. Rio de Janeiro.

M. S. Soares, C. A. Furukawa, M. I. Cagnin, and D. M. B. Paiva. 2023. Accessible Learning Objects: A Systematic Literature Review. Universal Access in the Information Society (2023). DOI: 10.1007/s10209-023-01025-7

M. S. Soares, C. A. Furukawa, M. I. Cagnin, and D. M. B. Paiva. 2024. Accessibility Barriers for Blind Students in Teaching-learning Systems. Journal of Universal Computer Science (2024). DOI: 10.3897/jucs.106239

F. A. A. Tavares. 2020. Uma investigação sobre objetos de aprendizagem utilizados no design instrucional de uma escola militar de ensino técnico.

J. Thatcher, C. Waddell, S. Henry, S. Swierenga, M. Urban, M. Burks, B. Regan, and P. Bohman. 2002. Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Glasshaus (2002).

Judith Vrugte and Ton Jong. 2017. Self-Explanations in Game-Based Learning: From Tacit to Transferable Knowledge. 141–159. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-39298-1_8

W3C. 2014. Cartilha acessibilidade na web, fascículo 1. [link]. Acesso em: 30 de agosto de 2021.

WCAG 2.1. 2018. Web content accessibility guidelines 2.1. [link].

Cara Wilson, Margot Brereton, Bernd Ploderer, and Laurianne Sitbon. 2018. MyWord: Enhancing Engagement, Interaction and Self-Expression with Minimally-Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum through a Personal Audio-Visual Dictionary. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (Trondheim, Norway) (IDC ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 106–118. DOI: 10.1145/3202185.3202755

Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C. Ohlsson, Björn Regnell, and Anders Wesslén. 2012. Experimentation in Software Engineering. Springer. I–XXIII, 1–236 pages.