Inclusive play

The 7 principles of Universal Design

1. Equitable use. The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities
2. Flexibility in Use
3. Simple and intuitive
4. Perceptible information
5. Tolerance for error
6. Low physical effort
7. Size and space for approach and use

Every user is an expert

The player, player’s attendant, parent, or teacher knows best what they need and like in a game. Every case is different. Therefore, it’s essential to give the right information about which games are inclusive and which potential barriers to play are available in the game to enjoy the experience. After many meetings with experts, end-users, and attendants, we’ve collected a clear and easy list of potential obstacles. This way, the user can decide for themselves if they want to play the game. When playground equipment is too complicated for children with disabilities, they are less likely to use it for fear of improper use, leading to isolation.

Context

The first action is to create as early on in the project the right context, policies, and awareness for the play space. Without this, the goals will be unclear, there will be no processes to share the playground’s existence, and the playground’s content will not match the users’ needs.

This process involves sharing knowledge and wishes with the playground design team and should define goals, users, and users’ needs. Involve the right people, share knowledge of inclusion within the group, try out the products you would like to place, and discuss the team’s wishes, chances, and opportunities. Involve the community, parents, schools, teachers, and end-users, reflecting every group of end-users. Think about the practicalities. Make sure the location and distance to the playground is not an issue. The site is accessible and provides the required facilities.

Communication

Share information actively, go out, and try to reach potential users and visitors. The social barrier is bigger than the physical barrier. Users must know about the play space to be able to experience it. Often users are afraid of the unknown or simply don’t know about a play space’s possibilities or existence.

Communication and transparency are more important than the actual play space itself.

Communication and transparency are more important than the actual play space itself. At the beginning of the process (and during the context phase), finalization, and years after completion, it’s critical to communicate about the play space and their goals. Information about the play space, facilities, accessibility, and offerings should be available for a user or a visitor.

Improve or a new game?

Yalp Interactive start bundles have proven to be the most popular games, especially the Sona start bundle games have proven themselves over the last 10 years to be enjoyed the most based on hundreds of thousands of hours of play. For these games, we can definitely say that the core gameplay works and is a lot of fun. But as we see with these 3 locations, there are still inclusion obstacles present.

Our goal here is to improve the existing games and not create five completely new games. Completely changing a game can “fix” a problem, but this can mean removing the offending game component or mechanics from the game and changing the core gameplay. We’re looking at finding solutions for these obstacles.

One solution we apply is social game mechanics. As mentioned before, the need for everyone to play together at all times is not a goal in itself. But where we create opportunities for players to interact with the play equipment’s design, the games can stimulate social play.

A few examples of game mechanics we use to encourage players to play together:

Turns

Cooperation

Voting

Roles

Rewards

Spectators

De Optimist – Memo

Inclusion not only means looking at children with disabilities but actually making sure the difficulty fits all the users on the playground.

The Yalp Memo Interactive play pillars are one of our most complete interactive products where we barely scratched the surface of all the cool content and games that we can create for it. We received feedback from a teacher who experienced some struggles while using the Memo in her classes. The ABC game was developed with capital letters and the “adult” way of pronouncing the letters, but when children learn their letters for the first time, they learn how these letters sound when used in words, not how they are pronounced when we talk about the letters separately.

“A young boy, 5 years old, came up to me and already knew his tables. I was really surprised. Apparently, he played the multiplication game on the Memo and learned his tables this way.”

Djoeke Kunnen – Teacher kindergarten and IT coordinator De Optimist

The challenge with mathematics games is presenting the difficulty so any player can enjoy the game on their own level. And mainly the introduction of numbers and the first rules of addition, for example, are the foundation for anyone who does maths. And this is also the main area after we developed the core topics of all the mathematics games we were missing in some of our games: learning the basics first.

Talking with the users is a great way to learn and change the games to their needs.

For the ABC game, we quickly added lowercase letters and recorded new samples in the right way. We asked for examples on how to pronounce the letters, and we looked at one of the leading learning methods for learning the letters. And just like that, we now have two games with two different goals. First, learn your letters and how to use them and then decide how they are also called and their capital counterparts.

Regarding the math obstacles, the R&D team was also quickly able to tweak, improve or add this type of content quickly to the Memo.