IEP Objectives :  Expanded Core Curriculum Games for Visually Impaired Students

IEP Technologies

ObjectiveEd.com is our new company where we are building Expanded Core Curriculum games for blind students, based on a student’s IEP . 
The student’s advancement in acquiring skills in these education-based games and interactive simulations are maintained in a private secure cloud, accessible to the school IEP team  in a web-based console . 
If you are a Special Ed Director , press for more details on learning about these types of games as part of maximizing student outcomes, relating to their 
IEP Program .

Blindfold Horses

No, this is not a blog about blindfolding a horse, and then hoping it finds its way home.
When I heard of another game where you travel by walking two fingers on the screen, I thought that would be a great gesture for a racing game, or in a sports games.  Using that gesture, I floated the idea by the blind testers, and they liked it.

The first step was to create an app that would recognize the walking gesture, and how fast your fingers are walking.  To give you feedback, you hear a horse walking or galloping.  The faster you walk, the faster the horse sounds.  Here’s how a walking horse sounds:

 
And here is how a galloping horse sounds:

 
When you play Blindfold Horse Race, your horse starts walking as you walk your fingers.  When you speed up your finger walk, your horse starts to gallop.  As your fingers walk on the screen faster, your horse gallops faster and faster.  The testers liked the first version of the game, where the sound speeded up as they walked their fingers faster, so the next step was to make the game fun, and make sure each time you play the game, the outcome is different.
Practice mode in Blindfold Horse Race is a time trial: you try to complete one furlong as quickly as possible.  A fast horse runs a furlong in 10 to 20 seconds, and on average, most people complete the game’s time trial in 12 seconds.  Once you finish the time trial, you can race against other horses in a 5 furlong, 10 furlong or on one mile track.
We selected names of champion horses for the you to race against, and how well those horses performed.  When you race, your horse are in the center post, and the other horses are at post one and post three.  Once the starting bell goes off, you must run your fingers on the screen and be the first to the finish line.
That made the game challenging and the testers enjoyed playing it over and over again, but they wanted an soundscape that was more than just the horse’s hooves, and they wanted more variety.