Let’s start from the premise that there will be at least two variants of a game: one or more for the elderly/partially sighted (“challenged”) player(s) and one for those without such challenges (“carers” – who may be professinal carers, volunteers or friends and family).
Different games lend themselves to different combinations of players – and hence different challenges and benefits – as follows:
Single-Player Games
Crosswords, Word Search, Patience (solitaire) and the like are solitary pastimes.
The player is not competing against anyone else. The outcome depends on chance and/or their skill or knowledge. Typically, the application is relatively simple as it just has to enforce the rules or compare inputs with a known “correct” answer. Another benefit is that these can occupy as much time as the player is prepared to give them – and how they play could give valuable health tracking input.
However, they don’t provide any social benefit at all.
Two-Player Games
Scrabble, Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Go and many others are in this category.
Assuming one of the players is elderly/partially-sighted, there are three scenarios of interest:
Challenged v Computer
Assuming such an implementation of the game exists, this should be an exercise in making the user interface more accessible. The benefits – and limitations – are then similar to those of single-player games.
Challenged v Carer
Here, the app needs only to enforce the rules and ensure that each player can see the current state of the game. However, each player is likely to have different needs. The carer may want to be able to play from their smartphone while the challenged player may need a large-screen TV to be able to see the state of play.
Time pressure on the carer is likely to be an issue though. They may be dipping into the game briefly while working but the challenged player is concentrating full-time on the game and spending a lot of time researching it. Scrabble is a great example of this. You can spend all day looking up potential words or just play the two-letter word you see immediately.
There may be some games where the carer needs to provide additional support – perhaps in the form of spoken descriptions or feedback – without which the challenged player could not play at all.
The social interactions involved in such a game can be invaluable – reducing loneliness and isolation for the challenged player while providing reassurance and feedback to the carer on how they are.
Challenged v Challenged
Many games could be played by two players with similar – or diverse – challenges. While the range of games may be slightly less due to the constrained abilities of the players, games where this can be achieved have the potential to build new friendships with others who share some of your challenges and would be glad to spend time with you.
Multi-Player Games
As the number of players increases, so the number of permutations of challenged v carers grows exponentially – but fall into one of these categories:
Challenged Player(s) can Participate
Where most players are not challenged, can we modify the user interface to allow a challenged player to participate on equal (or substantially equal) terms?
Challenged Players + Carer
In some games there is a role of ‘banker’, ‘scorer’, ‘narrator’, ‘question-master’ or similar – which may be much harder to enable for challenged players. A single carer taking this role may allow the game to be played.
Challenged Players (only)
If the standard version of a game cannot be made accessible, could a sub-set or modified version be played? If all of the players are subject to the same restrictions, the essence of the game may be playable even if some of the ‘bells & whistles” are not applicable.