Let's Play Together: Adaptation Guidelines of Board Games for Players with Visual Impairment

Board games present accessibility barriers for players with visual impairment since they often employ visuals alone to communicate gameplay information. Our research focuses on board game accessibility for those with visual impairment. This paper describes a three-phase study conducted to develop board game accessibility adaptation guidelines. These guidelines were developed through a user-centered design approach that included in-depth interviews and a series of user studies using two adapted board games. Our findings indicate that participants with and without visual impairment were able to play the adapted games, exhibiting a balanced experience whereby participants had complete autonomy and were provided with equal chances of victory. Our paper also contributes to the game and accessibility communities through the development of adaptation guidelines that allow board games to become inclusive irrespective of a player's visual impairment.