When people play digital games together, their experiences are often influenced by the group. While prior research has focused on the individual player experience, we argue that a deeper understanding of group dynamics is required for designing digital games that effectively support complex social interactions. In this paper, we characterise the lived group experiences of fifteen long-term players, using qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews examining group lifecycles, their impact on play, and how games and platforms support or constrain them. Our findings show that gaming groups are diverse, often shifting between people- and task-orientation based on needs and motivations. They influence how games are experienced, establishing shared practices that persist across contexts. Yet, while games and tools support group play, they often lack flexibility to accommodate such evolving and nuanced social dynamics. We provide insight into how group-based play unfolds and examples of how games can better support it.

Games for physical therapy can motivate patients, and HCI research has provided various recommendations for their design. However, such recommendations often remain at a high level: They are rarely reviewed with patients or appraised through application to game design and analysis. We address this gap by refining and operationalizing existing lessons for therapeutic games for young people. First, we report on semi-structured interviews with young people (aged 7–16) and parents, reviewing the lessons. Second, we operationalize them using an established collection of game design patterns to provide concrete guidance for game design and analysis. We critically appraise our approach through application to two games for physical therapy, Liberi and Wii Fit. Results show that high-level design implications can be made actionable using existing game design patterns, and we contribute a practical approach for the analysis and design of games for physical therapy.

Aiming tasks are common in VR, but are challenging to perform without vision. They require identifying a target's location and then precisely aiming and selecting it. In this paper, we explore how to support blind people in aiming tasks using a VR Archery scenario. We implemented three techniques: 1) Spatialized Audio, a baseline where the target emits a specific 3D sound to convey its location; 2) Target Confirmation, where the previous condition is augmented with secondary Beep sounds to indicate proximity to the target; and 3) Reticle-Target perspective, where the auditory feedback conveys the relation between the target and the user's aiming reticle. A study with 15 blind participants compared the three techniques under two scenarios: stationary and moving targets. Target Confirmation and Reticle-Target Perspective clearly outperformed Spatialized Audio, but user preferences were evenly split between these two techniques. We discuss how our findings may support the development of VR experiences that are more accessible and enjoyable to a broader range of users.

Interacting with close-range objects in Virtual Reality (VR) is often prompted by visual cues, making it hard for visually impaired people to perceive their location and interact with them. To study how to enable blind users to locate and interact with close virtual objects, we adapted the arcade Speed-of-Light game as a blind-accessible VR application. We implemented three techniques: 1) Speech Feedback (e.g., “Top Right”), 2) Sonification, and 3) 2D Grid Position (e.g., “A3” for column and row); and conducted a user study with 15 blind participants aiming to provide insights into the design of non-visual techniques that convey information about targets at arm-reach. Speech Feedback was the most intuitive overall but verbose and the least flexible, while 2D Grid Position was found straightforward for regular spreadsheet users. Results also showed greater difficulty with Sonification, although it was valued by few participants who appreciated the challenge.

In multiplayer gaming, skill disparity can lead to frustrating and excluding experiences. Balancing approaches exist to level the playing field (e.g., providing aim assistance to low-performing players), but it is unclear how different design choices affect individual player experience. We first introduce a design space for balancing mechanics encompassing six categories: Determination, Timing, Targeting, Effect, Feedback, and Information. We then present a mixed-methods study, focused on the effect of two subcategories: Targeting Direction and Effect Dependency on skill. In this study, eight pairs of participants played a game prototype and experienced seven balancing mechanics. We collected data from questionnaires and group interviews, revealing implications for future designs, including the importance of 1) merited victory that does not ignore individual achievements, 2) sense of agency when determining the balancing before and during gameplay, and 3) balancing as an intrinsic part of the game that does not disrupt the core gameplay.

Playing cooperative games is recognised as a positive social activity. Yet, we have limited means to rigorously define or communicate the structures that govern these experiences, hindering attempts at consolidating knowledge and limiting the potential of design efforts. In this work, we introduce the Living Framework for Cooperative Games (LFCG), a framework derived from a multi-step systematic analysis of 129 cooperative games with contributions of eleven researchers. We describe how LFCG can be used as a tool for analyses and ideation, and as a shared language for describing a game’s design. LFCG is published as a web application to facilitate use and appropriation. It supports the creation, dissemination and aggregation of game reports and specifications; and enables stakeholders to extend and publish custom versions. Lastly, we discuss using a research-driven approach for formalising game structures and the advantages of community contributions for consolidation and reach.

Many Virtual Reality (VR) locomotion techniques have been proposed, but those explored for and with blind people are often custom-made or require specialized equipment. Consequently, it is unclear how popular techniques can support blind people’s VR locomotion, blocking access to most VR experiences. We implemented three popular techniques — Arm Swinging, Linear Movement (joystick-based steering), and Point & Teleport — with minor adaptations for accessibility. We conducted a study with 14 blind participants consisting of navigation tasks with these techniques and a semi-structured interview. We found no differences in overall performance (e.g., completion time), but contrasting preferences. Findings highlight the challenges and advantages of each technique and participants’ strategies. We discuss, among others, how augmenting the techniques enabled blind people to navigate in VR, the greater control of movement of Arm Swinging, the simplicity and familiarity of Linear Movement, and the potential for efficiency and for scanning the environment of Point & Teleport.

For families, where abilities, motivations, and availability vary widely, opportunities for intergenerational play are limited. Designing games that cater to these differences remains an open challenge. In this paper, we first identify barriers related with time and expertise. Next, we propose asymmetric game design and asynchronous play to reconcile children's and adults' requirements; and interdependent gameplay mechanics to foster real-world interactions. Following this approach, we designed a testbed game and conducted a mixed-methods remote study with six pairs of adult-child family members. Our results showcase how asymmetric, asynchronous experiences can be leveraged to create novel gaming experiences that meet the requirements of family play. We discuss how interdependent progress can be designed to promote real-world interactions, creating pervasive conversational topics that permeate the family routine.

Mainstream games are typically designed around the visual experience, with behaviors and interactions highly dependent on vision. Despite this, blind people are playing mainstream games while dealing with and overcoming inaccessible content, often together with friends and audiences. In this work, we analyze over 70 hours of YouTube videos, where blind content-creators play visual-centric games. We point out the various strategies employed by players to overcome barriers that permeate mainstream games. We reflect on ways to enable and improve blind players’ experience with these games, shedding light on the positive and negative consequences of apparently benign design choices. Our observations underline how game elements are appropriated for accessibility, the incidental consequences of audio design, and the trade-offs between accessibility, agency, and engagement.

As virtual reality (VR) is typically designed in terms of visual experience, it poses major challenges for blind people to understand and interact with the environment. To address this, we propose a design space to explore how to augment objects and their behaviours in VR with a nonvisual audio representation. It intends to support designers in creating accessible experiences by explicitly considering alternative representations to visual feedback. To demonstrate its potential, we recruited 16 blind users and explored the design space under two scenarios in the context of boxing: understanding the location of objects (the opponent's defensive stance) and their movement (opponent's punches). We found that the design space enables the exploration of multiple engaging approaches for the auditory representation of virtual objects. Our findings depicted shared preferences but no one-size-fits-all solution, suggesting the need to understand the consequences of each design choice and their impact on the individual user experience.

User-generated content plays a key role in social networking, allowing a more active participation, socialisation, and collaboration among users. In particular, media content has been gaining a lot of ground, allowing users to express themselves through different types of formats such as images, GIFs and videos. The majority of this growing type of online visual content remains inaccessible to a part of the population, in particular for those who have a visual disability, despite available tools to mitigate this source of exclusion. We sought to understand how people are perceiving this type of online content in their networks and how support tools are being used. To do so, we conducted a user study, with 258 social network users through an online questionnaire, followed by interviews with 20 of them – 7 blind users and 13 sighted users. Results show how the different approaches being employed by major platforms may not be sufficient to address this issue properly. Our findings reveal that users are not always aware of the possibility and the benefits of adopting accessible practices. From the general perspectives of end-users experiencing accessible practices, concerning barriers encountered, and motivational factors, we also discuss further approaches to create more user engagement and awareness.

Typing on mobile devices is a common and complex task. The act of typing itself thereby encodes rich information, such as the typing method, the context it is performed in, and individual traits of the person typing. Researchers are increasingly using a selection or combination of experience sampling and passive sensing methods in real-world settings to examine typing behaviours. However, there is limited understanding of the effects these methods have on measures of input speed, typing behaviours, compliance, perceived trust and privacy. In this paper, we investigate the tradeoffs of everyday data collection methods. We contribute empirical results from a four-week field study (N=26). Here, participants contributed by transcribing, composing, passively having sentences analyzed and reflecting on their contributions. We present a tradeoff analysis of these data collection methods, discuss their impact on text-entry applications, and contribute a flexible research platform for in the wild text-entry studies.

Smartphones are shipped with built-in screen readers and other accessibility features that enable blind people to autonomously learn and interact with the device. However, the process is not seamless, and many face difficulties in the adoption and path to becoming more experienced users. In the past, games like Minesweeper served to introduce and train people in the use of the mouse, from its left and right click to precision pointing required to play the game. Smartphone gestures (and particularly screen reader gestures) pose similar challenges to the ones first faced by mouse users. In this work, we explore the use of games to inconspicuously train gestures. We designed and developed a set of accessible games, enabling users to practice smartphone gestures. We evaluated the games with 8 blind users and conducted remote interviews. Our results show how purposeful accessible games could be important in the process of training and discovering smartphone gestures, as they offer a playful method of learning. This, in turn, increases autonomy and inclusion, as this process becomes easier and more engaging.

The landscape of digital games is segregated by player ability. For example, sighted players have a multitude of highly visual games at their disposal, while blind players may choose from a variety of audio games. Attempts at improving cross-ability access to any of those are often limited in the experience they provide, or disregard multiplayer experiences. We explore ability-based asymmetric roles as a design approach to create engaging and challenging mixed-ability play. Our team designed and developed two collaborative testbed games exploring asymmetric interdependent roles. In a remote study with 13 mixed-visual-ability pairs we assessed how roles affected perceptions of engagement, competence, and autonomy, using a mixed-methods approach. The games provided an engaging and challenging experience, in which differences in visual ability were not limiting. Our results underline how experiences unequal by design can give rise to an equitable joint experience.

Games bring people together in immersive and challenging interactions. In this paper, we share multiplayer gaming experiences of people with visual impairments collected from interviews with 10 adults and 10 minors, and 140 responses to an online survey. We include the perspectives of 17 sighted people who play with someone who has a visual impairment, collected in a second online survey. Our focus is on group play, particularly on the problems and opportunities that arise from mixed-visual-ability scenarios. These show that people with visual impairments are playing diverse games, but face limitations in playing with others who have different visual abilities. What stands out is the lack of intersection in gaming opportunities, and consequently, in habits and interests of people with different visual abilities. We highlight barriers associated with these experiences beyond inaccessibility issues and discuss implications and opportunities for the design of mixed-ability gaming.

Blind people face significant challenges when using smartphones. The focus on improving nonvisual mobile accessibility has been at the level of touchscreen access. Our research investigates the challenges faced by blind people in their everyday usage of mobile phones. In this article, we present a set of studies performed with the target population, novices and experts, using a variety of methods, targeted at identifying and verifying challenges; and coping mechanisms. Through a multiple methods approach we identify and validate challenges locally with a diverse set of user expertise and devices, and at scale through the analyses of the largest Android and iOS dedicate forums for blind people. We contribute with a prioritized corpus of smartphone challenges for blind people, and a discussion on a set of directions for future research, which tackle the open and often overlooked challenges.

Word completion interfaces are ubiquitously available in mobile virtual keyboards; however, there is no prior research on how to design these interfaces for screen reader users. In addressing this, we propose a design space for nonvisual representation of word completions. The design space covers seven categories aiming to identify challenges and opportunities for interaction design in an unexplored research topic. It is intended to guide the design of novel interaction techniques, serving as a framework for researchers and practitioners working on nonvisual word completion. To demonstrate its potential, we engaged blind users in an exploration of the design space, to create their own bespoke word completion solutions. Through this study we found that users create alternative interfaces that extended current screen readers' capabilities. Resulting interfaces are less conservative than mainstream solutions on notification frequency and cardinality. Customization decisions were based on perceived benefits/costs and varied depending on multiple factors such as users' perceived prediction accuracy, potential keystroke gains, and situational restrictions.

Our goal is to disseminate an exploratory investigation that examined how physical presence and collaboration can be important factors in the development of assistive robots that can go beyond information-giving technologies. In particular, this video exhibits the setting and procedures of a user study that explored different types of collaborative interactions between robots and blind people.

Blind people rely on sighted peers and different assistive technologies to accomplish everyday tasks. In this paper, we explore how assistive robots can go beyond information-giving assistive technologies (e.g., screen readers) by physically collaborating with blind people. We first conducted a set of focus groups to assess how blind people perceive and envision robots. Results showed that, albeit having stereotypical concerns, participants conceive the integration of assistive robots in a broad range of everyday life scenarios and are welcoming of this type of technology. In a second study, we asked blind participants to collaborate with two versions of a robot in a Tangram assembly task: one robot would only provide static verbal instructions whereas the other would physically collaborate with participants and adjust the feedback to their performance. Results showed that active collaboration had a major influence on the successful performance of the task. Participants also reported higher perceived warmth, competence and usefulness when interacting with the physically assistive robot. Overall, we provide preliminary results on the usefulness of assistive robots and the possible role these can hold in fostering a higher degree of autonomy for blind people.

Braille input enables fast nonvisual entry speeds on mobile touchscreen devices. Yet, the lack of tactile cues commonly results in typing errors, which are hard to correct. We propose Hybrid-Brailler, an input solution that combines physical and gestural interaction to provide fast and accurate Braille input. We use the back of the device for physical chorded input while freeing the touchscreen for gestural interaction. Gestures are used in editing operations, such as caret movement, text selection, and clipboard control, enhancing the overall text entry experience. We conducted two user studies to assess both input and editing performance. Results show that Hybrid-Brailler supports fast entry rates as its virtual counterpart, while significantly increasing input accuracy. Regarding editing performance, when compared with the mainstream technique, Hybrid-Brailler shows performance benefits of 21% in speed and increased editing accuracy. We finish with lessons learned for designing future nonvisual input and editing techniques.

Blind people face many barriers using smartphones. Still, previous research has been mostly restricted to non-visual gestural interaction, paying little attention to the deeper daily challenges of blind users. To bridge this gap, we conducted a series of workshops with 42 blind participants, uncovering application challenges across all levels of expertise, most of which could only be surpassed through a support network. We propose Hint Me!, a human-powered service that allows blind users to get in-app assistance by posing questions or browsing previously answered questions on a shared knowledge-base. We evaluated the perceived usefulness and acceptance of this approach with six blind people. Participants valued the ability to learn independently and anticipated a series of usages: labeling, layout and feature descriptions, bug workarounds, and learning to accomplish tasks. Creating or browsing questions depends on aspects like privacy, knowledge of respondents and response time, revealing the benefits of a hybrid approach.

The physical keypads that used to dominate our mobile devices provided additional support for non-visual interaction - the keys could be recognized tactually, the interfaces were simpler and consistent. When combined with a screen reader, these devices could be easily operated by blind people. The advent of smartphones, with their rich, feature-filled applications and interfaces, have brought forward additional challenges for blind users. Apps and features are no longer developed by a single entity leading to an overwhelming variety of interfaces. We present an approach that superimposes a virtual overlay to all other interfaces ensuring interface consistency by re-structuring how content is accessed in every screen. To explore the approach, we split the screen, dedicating half to a configurable set of static options mimicking always available physical buttons regardless of context; while the other enables the standard content navigation gestures with the ability to re-order content and apply filters. In a qualitative study with nine visually impaired participants, the virtual overlays were reported as simpler to use, while still providing full-fledged usage of the system and the third party applications, and were seen as effective and useful, particularly for novice users.

Touch-enabled devices have a growing variety of screen sizes; however, there is little knowledge on the effect of key size on non-visual text-entry performance. We conducted a user study with 12 blind participants to investigate how non-visual input performance varies with four QWERTY keyboard sizes (ranging from 15mm to 2.5mm). This paper presents an analysis of typing performance and touch behaviors discussing its implications for future research. Our findings show that there is an upper limit to the benefits of larger target sizes between 10mm and 15mm. Input speed decreases from 4.5 to 2.4 words per minute (WPM) for targets sizes below 10mm. The smallest size was deemed unusable by participants even though performance was in par with previous work.

Most work investigating mobile HCI is carried out within controlled laboratory settings; these spaces are not representative of the real-world environments for which the technology will predominantly be used. The result of which can produce a skewed or inaccurate understanding of interaction behaviors and users-- abilities. While mobile in-the-wild studies provide more realistic representations of technology usage, there are additional challenges to conducting data collection outside of the lab. In this paper we discuss these challenges and present TinyBlackBox, a standalone data collection framework to support mobile in-the-wild studies with today--s smartphone and tablet devices.

Non-visual text-entry for people with visual impairments has focused mostly on the comparison of input techniques reporting on performance measures, such as accuracy and speed. While researchers have been able to establish that non-visual input is slow and error prone, there is little understanding on how to improve it. To develop a richer characterization of typing performance, we conducted a longitudinal study with five novice blind users. For eight weeks, we collected in-situ usage data and conducted weekly laboratory assessment sessions. This paper presents a thorough analysis of typing performance that goes beyond traditional aggregated measures of text-entry and reports on character-level errors and touch measures. Our findings show that users improve over time, even though it is at a slow rate (0.3 WPM per week). Substitutions are the most common type of error and have a significant impact on entry rates. In addition to text input data, we analyzed touch behaviors, looking at touch contact points, exploration movements, and lift positions. We provide insights on why and how performance improvements and errors occur. Finally, we derive some implications that should inform the design of future virtual keyboards for non-visual input.

People with disabilities rely on assistive technology (AT) software to interact with their mobile device. The overall functionality of AT depends on a set of requirements that are not always fulfilled by application developers, often resulting in cumbersome and slow interactions, or even render content inaccessible. To address these issues we present Assistive Macros, an accessibility service developed to enable users to perform a sequence of commands with a single selection. Macros can be created manually by the user or automatically by detecting repeated sequences of interactions. In this paper, we report a preliminary case study with our prototype involving a motor impaired user and his caregivers

The advent of system-wide accessibility services on mainstream touch-based smartphones has been a major point of inclusion for blind and visually impaired people. Ever since, researchers aimed to improve the accessibility of specific tasks, such text-entry and gestural interaction. However, little work aimed to understand and improve the overall accessibility of these devices in real world settings. In this paper, we present an eight-week long study with five novice blind participants where we seek to understand major concerns, expectations, challenges, barriers, and experiences with smartphones. The study included pre-adoption and weekly interviews, weekly controlled task assessments, and in-the wild system-wide usage. Our results show that mastering these devices is an arduous and long task, confirming the users' initial concerns. We report on accessibility barriers experienced throughout the study, which could not be encountered in task-based laboratorial settings. Finally, we discuss how smartphones are being integrated in everyday activities and highlight the need for better adoption support tools.

Tablet devices can display full-size QWERTY keyboards similar to the physical ones. Yet, the lack of tactile feedback and the inability to rest the fingers on the home keys result in a highly demanding and slow exploration task for blind users. We present SpatialTouch, an input system that leverages previous experience with physical QWERTY keyboards, by supporting two-handed interaction through multitouch exploration and spatial, simultaneous audio feedback. We conducted a user study, with 30 novice touchscreen participants entering text under one of two conditions: (1) SpatialTouch or (2) mainstream accessibility method Explore by Touch. We show that SpatialTouch enables blind users to leverage previous experience as they do a better use of home keys and perform more efficient exploration paths. Results suggest that although SpatialTouch did not result in faster input rates overall, it was indeed able to leverage previous QWERTY experience in contrast to Explore by Touch.