How to Design Games for Deaf Children: Evidence-Based Guidelines - 2nd International Workshop on Evidence-Based Technology Enhanced Learning - page 84

Table 5 Types of Games

CONSTRAINT BIB GL #

In a variety of problem solving and other academic tasks, deaf students
have been found more likely than hearing age-mates to focus on indi-
vidual item information rather than relations among items.

[16;43] 3.5.2

3.5.5

Deaf children generally prefer:
- human-like avatars to others;
- non-photorealistic consoles; when the age increases the use of non-photorealistic con-
soles decreases and the use of photorealistic consoles increases
- portable devices (e.g. Nintendo DS or tablets);
- games of movement (they often refer to the usage of balance board);
- playing by themselves, alone, and in the same place.

3.5

in terms of their success and observations allowed us to detect unique usability is-
sues. The results of all the studies of TERENCE for deaf children are in-line with
those found in the literature. Table 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 recap the findings. Each table is
related to specific characteristics (e.g. reading, attention, etc). A table is structured
into two main parts: the white part is related to deaf studies; the blue part is for
TERENCE findings alone.

3 Guidelines for the Design of Usable Games for Deaf

Individuals

There are many studies about design principles for technology artefacts for hear-
ing children, but not for deaf children. In this section we state the first guidelines
for designing computer games that are accessible for deaf children, and that arise
from the research in deafness reported above. We clustered the guidelines into the
following 5 main areas that are explained below.

3.1 Words on the Screen

According to the literature review, unfamiliar or ambiguous words, without con-
textual clues, are problematic for deaf children and words that have not been spe-
cifically introduced to the student cannot be lip-read. Moreover, if deaf readers
have an alteration in their visual selective attention, they could have problems in
identifying the letters of a word and in creating representations that preserve both
the correct letters and their correct spatial arrangements. Therefore texts should
use familiar and unambiguous words , paying attention to neighbouring words that
influence where the reader will fixate their attention [GL 3.1.1]. If unfamiliar,
ambiguous or abstract words are used then their meaning should be easy to be in-
ferred from the surrounding context [GL 3.1.2]. As explained in the literature re-
view, word length matters, thus words should not be too long [GL 3.1.3].