Multimodality by electronic games as assistive technology for visual disabilities

摘要

With increasingly attention to the digital gaming industry in entertainment, games have become more graphical, solidifying the visual modality. In this reality, visually impaired people have little participation in the market and lose all the culture involved in this industry. Across the planet 246 million people have low vision and 39 million are blind. In Brazil there are 6 million people with low vision and 582,000 blind, almost all excluded from digital gaming. Analyzing gaming market for the blind and the adaptations of titles seeking their inclusion, this research aims to propose from the perspective of Information Science, the initial studies in order to help accessibility studies for the visually impaired using electronic games, treated as Assistive Technology with concepts of Multimodality. It intends to be a new approach for a theoretical work by analyzing accessibility guidelines for visually impaired people, which can serve as steps for interpreting these public demands in digital games development, aimed at the greater inclusion of them. This is still a theoretical work with a suggestion that there is a market for games developed for the visually impaired. Its conclusion is there is a lack of concern by developers to deploy best items in this area and there is a lack of opportunity by Brazilian government to promote such research and development. Researches made by organizations were observed and used as a basis for checking possibility of a better inclusion of the visually impaired.