Cognitive Accessibility in Educational Games: A Set of Recommendations

Abstract

Educational games aim to teach players new knowledge or skills in an entertaining manner. However, they are often not accessible for players with disabilities, hindering their right to education. For players with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties, it may be particularly challenging to determine the response to the game’s visual, auditory, and haptic stimuli. This chapter presents a set of recommendations to develop educational games that are accessible to these players. To that aim, a literature review was conducted comprising the past ten years of research about educational games and game accessibility. Ten papers were selected, which take diverse approaches to the topic: some review existing research, while others focus on the development of an accessible educational game. All of them address cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties, but some also include recommendations for visual, hearing, and motor accessibility. The review of these papers shows that, to develop an accessible game for players with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties, it is recommended to provide stimuli through several channels of communication, to allow the game’s pace to be customizable, and to design simple but engaging content, among other features. Although these recommendations are not universally applicable to every educational game, they are a first step to bring together players, teachers, developers, and researchers to create more interactive and engaging educational experiences for all.