Using Serious Games to Create Awareness on Visual Impairments

Visual impairments define a wide spectrum of disabilities that vary in severity, from the need to wear glasses, to permanent loss of vision or blindness. This paper discusses the process undertaken in creating two simulators, one which emulates partially-sighted visual impairment and another focused on full-blindness. In order to create the simulators, extensive research was conducted surrounding the effects of partially-sightedness and blindness, highlighting existing software and games that promote awareness for visual impairments. This paper underlines the necessity of raising awareness for visual impairments and the effectiveness of applying serious games for this very goal. After developing the simulators, experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of it. Findings from the experiments were analysed and documented.