Virtual Stage: An Immersive Musical Game for People with Visual Impairment

Abstract

Musical games help in motor and cognitive development and provide pleasure because of their playfulness and challenge. However, visually impaired people are unable to interact with conventional music games, because audiovisual aspects are inaccessible to this public. The objective of this study was to investigate if three-dimensional sounds could guide blind users during interaction with a tablet music game. As a proof of concept, a musical game for Android was developed with binaural audio techniques. Three fully blind users evaluated the game. The results show that the developed game was able to immerse the users in a virtual environment.