Abstract:

Education is a universal right and ensuring that everyone can access to it regardless of each person’s sensory capability is beyond any reasonable doubt. Inclusion in education has long been on the agenda of international organisations, such as UNESCO or UNICEF. It is actually the first principle of the European Pillar of social rights for the European Commission, that states “that everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning in order to maintain and acquire skills that enable them to participate fully in society and manage successfully transitions in the labour market”. Game-based learning has proved to be a strong driver for fostering learning and, given the interactive nature of games, a great platform for active learning. We do not play to learn, but we learn as we play, so using games in education facilitates learning while increasing students’ motivation. Digital games and more present in our lives than ever and have become part of the tools used in informal learning and at all levels of education, from preschool and elementary school, through middle school and high school, into colleges and universities, even into professional training or lifelong learning. Serious games in particular, are games developed expressly for education purposes that can be applied in those learning contexts and that have are flooding the educational games market.

The purpose of this paper is to approach the concepts of education, sensory accessibility, and serious games to propose a classification that serves as a basis for exploring the possibilities of serious games in an inclusive education. To this end, we first address the boundaries and relationships between the concepts of game and learning to differentiate between game-based learning, gamification and serious games. Then, existing classifications and academic approaches to serious games are reviewed to understand and classify games for education. Sensory accessibility needs are also analyzed from an inclusive education perspective. Finally, as this work is part of an ongoing research, a framework is presented for classifying education serious games and facilitating the analysis of sensory accessibility in relation to factors such as game mechanics, designs, gameplay, purpose, scope or audience.

Keywords:

Serious games, education, sensory barriers, accessibility, inclusive education.