TapBeats: accessible and mobile casual gaming

Abstract

Conventional video games today rely on visual cues to drive user interaction, and as a result, there are few games for blind and low-vision people. To address this gap, we created an accessible and mobile casual game for Android called TapBeats, a musical rhythm game based on audio cues. In addition, we developed a gesture system that utilizes text-to-speech and haptic feedback to allow blind and low-vision users to interact with the game's menu screens using a mobile phone touchscreen. A graphical user interface is also included to encourage sighted users to play as well. Through this game, we aimed to explore how both blind and sighted users can share a common game experience.