Beyond Fun: Players’ Experiences of Accessible Rehabilitation Gaming for Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Rehabilitation gaming—play of digital games that incorporate rehabilitation exercises—is a well-known and broadly applicable way to make physical rehabilitation more fun. It can motivate patients with spinal cord injury to engage in exercises that they find boring and can be as effective as traditional physiotherapy. However, patients’ needs are not only physical. Rehabilitation also needs to help patients overcome the psychological trauma of spinal cord injury. For patients coping with disability, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, or a loss of identity, rehabilitation gaming may provide benefits beyond making exercise more fun. We asked six participants with spinal cord injury to play three cycling-based rehabilitation games to determine how play might change their experiences of rehabilitation. They said that rehabilitation games may be able to help patients to actively participate in their rehabilitation, help them to rediscover who they are, and show them a better future living with spinal cord injury.