Empowerment and ownership in intellectual disability gaming

Abstract

As with other populations, the usage of games by people with Intellectual Disability (ID) has been increasingly approached by research. Notwithstanding, the role of games in the lives of people with disabilities tends to be studied through a categorical picture that emphasizes its therapeutic characteristics and neglects games as recreation and as a form of cultural expression. The present work aims to review the main research outcomes of the last 10 years in the field of gaming and ID. It presents an analysis of the main research objectives, and approaches to gaming adopted in the analysed studies, as a path to reflect on two specific concepts: empowerment and ownership. Therefore, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology, accompanied by statistical and content analysis procedures, was adopted to analyse a sample of 61 peer-reviewed research papers (2010-2020) in this field. The obtained results emphasize the passive role of individuals with ID in games research, with gaming mainly seen through therapeutic our game-based learning approaches. The presented reflection on inclusive research, through the parallelism between game studies and critical disability studies, also highlights that the access to games, as a cultural expression, for people with ID could foster the inclusion of these individuals in the public sphere, both in media and in the democratic civic structures. The produced insights intend to frame future approaches that situate the potential of games and their accessibility as strategies to decrease environmental barriers and hindrances that people with ID face in their specific contexts and foster inclusion.

Intellectual disability through gaming: Operationalizing accessibility, participation and inclusion

“…This perspective is in line with the idea that games research in the field of disability tends to adhere to medical perspectives of human beings, approaching games mainly as therapeutic resources instead of free virtual worlds that allow self-expression (Wästerfors and Hansson 2017). Such framing ignores to some extent people with disabilities as rightful members of the gaming world (Sousa 2020;Wästerfors and Hansson 2017). Unlike in research, in the video game industry change towards more accurate representations of human diversity is nowadays seen as a crucial goal, that includes the reduction of stereotypes, impacting virtual worlds but also society in a wider manner (Anderson-Barkley and Foglesong 2018).…”

“…In this respect, it is important to emphasize the framing of the game primarily as an experiential system, based on the interaction between the player with ID and the game, including any barriers and hindrances, but also as a cultural system, due to its permeability to individual factors of the players and the context. Even if this connection seems obvious, as we explored earlier, several barriers to the participation of people with ID in the world of gaming seem to remain (Wästerfors and Hansson 2017), both in terms of accessibility and in terms of representation (Sousa 2020).…”

“…Nevertheless, these studies tend to emphasize game design as a path for effectiveness, mainly seeing games as being developed with specific and "serious" purposes, somehow neglecting their role as a cultural form and a path for participation and social inclusion (Sousa 2020). This perspective is in line with the idea that games research in the field of disability tends to adhere to medical perspectives of human beings, approaching games mainly as therapeutic resources instead of free virtual worlds that allow self-expression (Wästerfors and Hansson 2017).…”

The Pedagogical Value of Creating Accessible Games: A Case Study with Higher Education Students

“…Combining the frequent marginalization of people with disabilities in gaming [24,25] and the need to explore the process as research established here, the adoption of PAR principles presented itself as very relevant. PAR can be considered as a specific form of action research defined by the systematic collection of data to implement action, empower change, and generate empirical and scientific evidence [26].…”

“…At the beginning of a two-semester subject of the Bachelor's degree in Videogames, students were challenged to design and develop a game and a specific physical interface that could be accessible to the above-mentioned sample of pwID. Emerging from the key problem of the lack of accessible games for this population-most specifically games that primarily target entertainment, developed considered their specific interests and priorities [24]-students were challenged to move away from a vision more closely related to serious games or games with specific goals, typically external to the game world. During game creation, more than developing for a specific target, students were also challenged to develop games that can be interesting for everyone, even if containing specific accessibility options and features.…”