Accessibility – Ciaran Laval

“Our Digital Selves” is scheduled for a full release on May 18th, I’m blogging about it a little early because I’m actually on holiday on a Mediterranean Island right now, hopefully enjoying some sun.

The man behind the documentary is Draxtor Despres, AKA Bernhard Drax. The documentary follows a research project supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Cultural Anthropology and Science, Technology, and Society). The project is supported by the University of California, Irvine; the University of Oregon; and the National Science Foundation.

The lead investigators are Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine and Donna Z. Davis, University of Oregon. The research project has so far been going for three years, so it’s quite an in depth project.

To get some insight into what this project is about it’s definitely worth following the earlier link, but here’s some of the blurb :

This research will have implications for improving health care and social support for people with disabilities. But it also will use the insights of people with disabilities to better understand how new online technologies influence how we think about our bodies, how we think about social interaction, and how we think about the role of the internet in everyday life.

The documentary certainly captures the essence of this as we see people using technology to connect with others.

Continue reading “Our Digital Selves Scheduled For Release On 18th May”

At the Game Developer’s Conference 2016 Professor Bob De Schutter of Applied Game Design at Miami University, gave an excellent presentation : Beyond Ageism: Designing Meaningful Games for an Older Audience.

Now you may be thinking that virtual worlds are not games, they aren’t, but they contain games and the mechanics of accessing virtual worlds are game like. The presentation Professor Bob De Schutter makes has themes that apply to virtual worlds too and platform providers as well as content creators would do well to pay heed to what he says.

That’s before we get to the sort of games older people play. Professor Bob De Schutter presented research from Quantic Foundry regarding the games people over 50 play. The top three, by gender :

Women over 50

FarmVille
Glitch
Second Life

Men over 50

Railroad Tycoon
Second Life
Microsoft Solitaire

This tells us that a certain virtual world that many of us are familiar with is popular amongst over 50’s. Many of us already knew that Second Life was popular amongst a more mature audience. Plenty of over 50’s also inhabit the likes of OpenSim, High Fidelity and more.

Now, as virtual worlds have an older crowd, the rest of the presentation makes for interesting viewing, it covers issues such as accessibility, ageism and the fact that older gamers want to be challenged, not patronised.

Continue reading “Virtual Reality And Virtual Worlds Should Pay Attention To Older Participants”