Abstract. During the last decades, people with disabilities have gained access to Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI); with a resultant impact on their societal inclusion and participation possibilities, standard HCI must therefore be made with care to avoid a possible reduction in this accessibility. Games, considered as a field of research, could provide new interaction principles, which can be incorporated into the existing HCI Standards, thereby complimenting and expanding these standards positively. However, games also provide an interesting new potential for better access and for supporting people with disabilities. They can be used to acclimatize people, who have had little or no exposure to technology, to interaction with modern Information and Computer Technology (ICT). Some simulation games act as an interface between games playing and real life, where the end user, in the form of an avatar, can interact within modern communication systems. It is important to ensure that everyone has accessibility to this technology, regardless of abilities or age. This paper advocates pro-active "research in games accessibility" and provides some first considerations on establishing a) guidelines for accessible game development, b) Active Game Accessibility (AGA) development framework to support game developers and Assistive Technology (AT) providers and c) a collection of games or game scenario examples ("code pattern collection") as a reference for game and AT developers.

The authors outline the potential of sensor technology for people with disabilities and those people with motor disabilities in general. First the authors describe how people with disabilities interact with the environment using specialized Assistive Technologies (AT) to interface modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) via the standardized Human-Computer Interface (HCI). The authors discuss the state-of-the-art and emerging sensor technology and how it enhances the potential of AT facilitated interaction with ICT/HCI regarding two domains: a) Sensor technology embedded in the environment providing flexible and adaptable means of interaction and b) sensor technology for better, more flexible and efficient application of skills of people with disabilities as AT solutions. Based on this analysis the authors advocate for changing AT practice in terms of assessment and service provision, but also R&D to recognize the extended potential provided by sensor technology to exploit presently unused or neglected skills of users. The authors underline the need to make AT solutions more flexible, adaptable, and affordable. the authors argue, in view of the potential of sensor technology, that there is an increasing need for an efficient software framework allowing an easy integration of sensor technology into AT solutions or even individual AT service provision. Finally the authors present the AsTeRICS framework as an example of an extendable AT construction set for an open source and crowed sourcing approach for a more user-centered, easy, fast, and economic implementation of sensor based or sensor enhanced AT solutions.

Abstract. Games are very important for learning, teaching, entertainment, inclusion. But they are of the most challenging applications concerning accessibility, and usability for people with disabilities. Especially in the context of playing together or in groups equal access is critical. In this paper we will present first attempts to define games accessibility guidelines helping game developers to design their products in a way that assistive technologies can interact with the game interface and that the parameters of usage can be adapted to the needs of people with disabilities.

No abstract

For comprehensively participating in society, independent and safe mobility is an important skill for many daily activities. Spatial cognition is one of the most important human capabilities and addresses the acquisition, processing and utilization of knowledge about the spatial layout of environments. Humans predominantly use the visual sense for this and for blind and low vision people, the lack of spatial perception reduces their quality of life and their ability of independent living. In particular the spatial navigation in unknown environments imposes challenges, since there is no possibility to train navigation tasks in advance. Today, blind and visually impaired people still rely on traditional navigation aids such as a cane for micro-navigation, which-however-does not help for developing orientation at larger scale or for planning of routes. To overcome this problem, this paper introduces the concept of a virtual environment that allows experiencing unknown locations by real walking while still staying in a sage controlled environment. Since this virtual environment can be controlled in its complexity, it can be adjusted from an abstract training scenario to a real-life situation such as train stations or airports.