Academic research

Blind Accessibility

Literature Review:

Emanuele Agrimi, Chiara Battaglini, Davide Bottari, Giorgio Gnecco & Barbara Leporini (2024). Game accessibility for visually impaired people: a review. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00500-024-09827-4

Mobile games:

Zihe Ran, Xiyu Li, Qing Xiao, Xianzhe Fan, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Yanyun Wang, Zhicong Lu (2025). How Users Who are Blind or Low Vision Play Mobile Games: Perceptions, Challenges, and Strategies. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714205

Ahmetovic D, Bernareggi C, Leporini B, Mascetti S (2022) WordMelodies: supporting the acquisition of literacy skills by children with visual impairment through a mobile app. ACM Trans Access Comput. https://doi.org/10.1145/3565029

Berge D, Bettencourt D, Lageweg S, Overman W, Zaidi A, Bidarra R (2020) Pinball for the visually impaired—an audio spatialization and sonification mobile game. In: Proceedings of CHI PLAY ‘20: the annual symposium on computer-human interaction in play, pp 43–46

Buzzi MC, Buzzi M, Leporini B, Senette C (2015) Playing with geometry: a multimodal android app for blind children. In: Proceedings of CHItaly 2015: the 11th biannual conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter, pp 134–137

Leporini B, Palmucci E (2018) Accessible question types on a touch-screen device: the case of a mobile game app for blind people. In: Proceedings of ICCHP 2018: the 16th international conference on computers helping people with special needs, part I, pp 262–269

Audio and Echolocation:

William R. Ayers (2021). What Is It Like to Be a Dolphin? Echolocation and Subjectivity in Video Games. Available at:https://online.ucpress.edu/jsmg/article/2/3/1/118096/What-Is-It-Like-to-Be-a-Dolphin-Echolocation-and?searchresult=1

Toups, Rachel (2025). The Silent Forest: An Audio Game. Available at: https://exhibits.wpi.edu/catalog/qz20sx90k

Chavéz-Sánchez N, Martinez de la Peña GA, Mendoza Franco GA, Heredia Carrillo EI (2020) Exploring audio game design with visually impaired players: a Mexican case study. In: Proceedings of AM ‘21: the 16th international audio mostly conference, pp 24–31

Friberg J, Gärdenfors D (2004) Audio games: new perspectives on game audio. In: Proceedings of ACE ‘04: the 2004 ACM SIGCHI international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology, pp 148–154

Gao Z, Wang H, Feng G, Lv H (2022) Exploring sonification mapping strategies for spatial auditory guidance in immersive virtual environments. ACM Trans Appl Percept 19(3):9. Available at. https://doi.org/10.1145/3528171

Heuten W, Henze N, Boll S, Klante P (2007) AuditoryPong–playing pong in the dark. In: Proceedings of audio mostly 2007: the 2nd conference on interaction with sound, pp 134–147

Miyakawa H, Kuratomo N, Bilal Salih HE, Zempo K (2021) Auditory Uta-Karuta: development and evaluation of an accessible card game system using audible cards for the visually impaired. Electronics 10:750

Sekhavat YA, Azadehfar MR, Zarei H, Roohi S (2022) Sonification and interaction design in computer games for visually impaired individuals. Multimedia Tools Appl 81:7847–7871. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11042-022-11984-3

Haptics and Movement

Bilal OR, Costanza V, Israr A, Palermo A, Celli P, Lau F, Daraio C (2020) A flexible spiraling-metasurface as a versatile haptic interface. Adv Mater Technol 5:2000181. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202000181

Grabski A, Toni T, Zigrand T, Weller R, Zachmann G (2016) Kinaptic—techniques and insights for creating competitive accessible 3D games for sighted and visually impaired users. In: Proceedings of haptics symposium ‘16: the 2016 IEEE haptics symposium, pp 325–331

Morelli T, Folmer E (2011) Real-time sensory substitution to enable players who are blind to play video games using whole body gestures. In: Proceedings of FDG ‘11: the 6th international conference on foundations of digital games, pp 147–153

Boardgames

Bolesnikov A, Kang J, Girouad A (2022) Understanding tabletop games accessibility: exploring board and card gaming experiences of people who are blind and low vision. In: Proceedings of TEI ‘22: the 16th international conference on tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction, article no. 21, pp 1–17

Caporusso N, Mkrtchyan L, Badia L (2010) A multimodal interface device for online board games designed for sight-impaired people. IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed 14(2):248–254. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/TITB.2009.2034739

da Rocha Tomé Filho F, Mirza-Babaei P, Kapralos B, Moreira Mendonça Junior G (2019) Let’s play together: adaptation guidelines of board games for players with visual impairment. In: Proceedings of CHI‘19: CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, article no. 631, pp 1–14

da Rocha Tomé Filho F, Kapralos B, Mirza-Babaei P (2021) Exploring current board games’ accessibility efforts for persons with visual impairment. Recent advances in technologies for inclusive well-being. Springer, Cham, pp 487–501

Föcker J, Hölig C, Best A, Röder B (2015) Neural plasticity of voice processing: evidence from event-related potentials in late-onset blind and sighted individuals. Restor Neurol Neurosci 33(1):15–30

Gnecco G, Battaglini C, Biancalani F, Bottari D, Leporini B (2024) Increasing accessibility of online board games to visually impaired people: the case of “Quantik”. In: Proceedings of EAI international conference on intelligent technologies for interactive entertainment. Lecture notes of the institute for computer sciences, social informatics and telecommunications engineering, vol 560, chap 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55722-4_12

Johnson GM, Kane S (2020) Game changer: accessible audio and tactile guidance for board and card games. In: Proceedings of W4A ‘20: the 17th international web for all conference, article no. 9, pp 1–12

Thevin L, Rodier N, Oriola B, Hachet M, Jouffrais C, Brock AM (2021) Inclusive adaptation of existing board games for gamers with and without visual impairments using a spatial augmented reality framework for touch detection and audio feedback. Proc ACM Hum Comput Interact 5(ISS):1–33 (article no. 505). Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488550

Blind Gamers

Ronny Andrade, Melissa J. Rogerson, Jenny Waycott, Steven Baker, Frank Vetere (2019). Playing Blind: Revealing the World of Gamers with Visual Impairment. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3290605.3300346

María Eugenia Larreina-Morales & Carme Mangiron (2023). Audio description in video games? Persons with visual disabilities weigh in. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10209-023-01036-4

Andrade, R., Rogerson, M. J., Waycott, J., Baker, S., & Vetere, F. (2019). Playing Blind: Revealing the World of Gamers with Visual Impairment. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019). Accessible at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300346

Archambault D, Ossmann R, Gaudy T, Miesenberger K (2007) Computer games and visually impaired people. Upgrade 8(2):43–53. Available at: https://cedric.cnam.fr/PUBLIS/RC1204.pdf

Beeston J, Power C, Cairns P, Barlet M (2018) Characteristics and motivations of players with disabilities in digital games. arXiv:1805.11352

Lozano MD, Penichet VM, Leporini B, Fernando A (2018) Tangible user interfaces to ease the learning process of visually impaired children. In: Proceedings of BCS HCI 2018: the 32nd international BCS human computer interaction conference, article no. 32, pp 1–5

Muchnik C, Efrati M, Nemeth E, Malin M, Hildesheimer M (1991) Central auditory skills in blind and sighted subjects. Scand Audiol 20(1):19–23. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3109/01050399109070785

Pedrini G, Ludovico LA, Presti G (2020) Evaluating the accessibility of digital audio workstations for blind or visually impaired people. In: Proceedings of CHIRA 2020: the 4th international conference on computer-human interaction research and applications, pp 225–232

Prarazu A, Balan O, Moldoveanu A, Moldoveanu F, Morar A, Ivascu S (2020) Overview on visually impaired gamers and game accessibility. In: Proceedings of EDULEARN20: the 12th international conference on education and new learning technologies, pp 5491–5501

Other

Balata J, Mikovec Z, Slavik P (2015) Problems of blind chess players. In: Proceedings of CogInfoCom 2015: the 6th IEEE international conference on cognitive infocommunications, pp 179–183 Neto LV, Fontoura Junior PHF, Bordini RA, Otsuka JL, Beder DM (2020) Design and implementation of an educational game considering issues for visually impaired people inclusion. Smart Learn Environ 7:4. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40561-019-0103-4

Röder B, Rösler F (2003) Memory for environmental sounds in sighted, congenitally blind and late blind adults: evidence for cross-modal compensation. Int J Psychophysiol 50(1–2):27–39. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8760(03)00122-3

Sabourin CJ, Merrikhi Y, Lomber SG (2022) Do blind people hear better? Trends Cogn Sci 26(11):999–1012. Available at: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(22)00212-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661322002121%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Yuan B, Folmer E (2008) Blind Hero: enabling Guitar Hero for the visually impaired. In: Proceedings of assets ‘08: The 10th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility, pp 169–176.

Yuan B, Folmer E, Harris FC Jr (2011) Game accessibility: a survey. Univ Access Inf Soc 10:81–100. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10209-010-0189-5