Hearing touch in ball games

Abstract: For children with blindness, ball games can be very challenging, as most ball games depend on quick perception of a multitude of things which are by people with good vision in general perceived through vision. The currently available aids for making ball games more accessible for people with blindness, most in the form of audible balls, leave room for improvement. The central aim in this thesis is to develop and evaluate a concept for a digitally enhanced audible ball system that seeks to provide a better ball game experience for children with blindness. Employing a human-centered design approach, the developed concept is based on the needs and requirements that are identified through an initial user study, literature studies and through several prototyping and user testing iterations. The final concept is based on providing electronic sound from the ball, as well as audible feedback about ball possession by means of a touch sensor system. For evaluation, a prototype implementing the concept is tested with users from the target user group. The concept is appreciated by the users and is concluded to indeed provide some means for achieving a better ball game experience for children with blindness.