A Technological Solution to Dexterity Board Gaming for Disabled Gamers

Research Project, 2021 – 2022

In 2018, hobby game sales in the US and Canada alone reached almost $ 1.5bn. Very little attention though is given to the accessibility of these products. The Meeple Like Us (MLU) project is aimed at identifying issues of inaccessibility in board games across a wide range of factors. A particular family of games, known as dexterity games, perform extremely poorly in these assessments and there is little evidence that it can be addressed at the level of design or publishing. These games emphasize flicking, balancing and precise aiming and changing any of these elements has a negative impact on how fun a game can be. Technology though can be used to create a framework that would allow for physically disabled players to meaningfully contribute to a dexterity game session in a way that retains the enjoyable tactility of the experience,