Creation and Future Development Process of a Serious Game: Raising Awareness of (Visual) Impairments

Abstract

Despite the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and binding laws, digital accessibility is not yet a norm at universities. Therefore (digital) accessibility must be taken into account and be comprehensible to create a university accessible for everyone. Innovative learning methods such as using Serious Games seem suitable for this. A well-designed game narrative can engage and simultaneously lead to proactive thoughts for educators. Moreover, a Serious Game holds the potential to raise awareness among players of the problems students and staff with impairments face at university. The content of our Serious Game “Lola’s first semester” showcases initial possibilities for proactive action and raises an identity-creating reference with examples from their own university. For the conception and implementation, the design-based research approach was chosen. This paper presents the results of a first evaluation study of the Serious Game regarding the story, the integrated mini-games and the implementation. Furthermore, it shows how the game is suitable for the described purpose and how it was received. The importance of a well-paced narrative combined with modern visuals and freely available assets are also covered in this paper. Additionally, it is discussed how the next iteration of the development could reach a wider audience. Another goal will be an integration of other impairments, like hearing impairment and mental health issues.