Kinaptic - Techniques and insights for creating competitive accessible 3D games for sighted and visually impaired users

We present the first accessible game that allows a fair competition between sighted and blind people in a shared virtual 3D environment. We use an asymmetric setup that allows touchless interaction via Kinect, for the sighted player, and haptic, wind, and surround audio feedback, for the blind player. We evaluated our game in an in-the-wild study. The results show that our setup is able to provide a mutually fun game experience while maintaining a fair winning chance for both players. Based on our study, we also suggest guidelines for future developments of games for visually impaired people that could help to further include blind people into society.