IEP Plan : ECC Games for Visually Impaired Students
IEP Technologies
ObjectiveEd.com is our new organization where we are building Expanded Core Curriculum interactive simulations for blind and low vision students, based on a child’s IEP .
The student’s advancement in acquiring skills in our ECC-based games will be stored in a private secure cloud, visible to the IEP team in a web-based dashboard .
If you are a Special Ed Teacher , press for more details on using these types of games as part of maximizing student outcomes, relating to their
Individual Educational Plan .
Bopping
In many schools for the blind, you’ll often find the Bop-It toy out on a table, or in a closet.
The Bop-It toy is an audio game where you follow the commands spoken by the toy – such as pulling a handle, twisting a crank, spinning a wheel or toggling a switch – with game pace speeding up as the you play.
While there’s already an accessible game in the app store based on the Bop-It toy, I had a lot of requests from teachers of the blind to build a Bop-It game. They wanted a game to enable blind people to learn and practice iPhone and iPad gestures.
Blindfold Bop starts out with easy mode where you are told to make one gesture every 20 seconds, for a total of 5 gestures. The gestures are simple: tap with 1 finger, tap with 2 fingers, swipe in any direction, or shake the phone. You get one point for each correct gesture, and the game is over after 3 mistakes. If you didn’t make 3 mistakes, you move to the next level, where the gestures come a little faster, about every 15 seconds, and you get two points for each correct gesture. Each level is a little faster than the prior, and the points go up.
Once you get good at the easy mode, medium mode tests you on gestures such as tap, tap with 2 fingers, swipe up, swipe down, swipe left, swipe right and shake. These are the most common gestures to control many apps, and performing well in Blindfold Bop translates to using the iPhone very effectively.
Hard mode trains you to perfect more 2 finger gestures such as swiping left and right with 2 fingers, and making a twisting motion. Twisting is placing your thumb and forefinger on the phone, and twisting the two fingers in a circle, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. The twist gesture is identical to operating the iPhone rotor – a key part of iPhone accessibility. Many actions, such as copying and pasting are done with the rotor.
Similar to Blindfold Simon, Blindfold Bop lets you compete with another player, by passing the phone back and forth. First you complete a level, then your friend completes that level, until one of you makes 3 mistakes.
Thanks to all the Blindfold Bop testers, who gave me ideas on which gestures to include in each level, and how to make the game more challenging.
To download Blindfold Bop, tap here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blindfold-bop/id1272873004?mt=8