UCL partnership brings accessible computing to our schools

Samantha Fletcher

Great to see these games been provided for FREE.

Two computer games designed for autistic children as part of a collaboration between MotionInput Games and the National Autistic Society are now available to download and play.

MotionInput Superhero Sportsday and MotionInput Watersports are available on the Microsoft store to download and play for free. The games were tested during the development stages by autistic students from Sybil Elgar School, in West London, and Helen Allison School in Kent. Teaching and therapy teams from the schools contributed information and ideas to make the games fun and useful for autistic children.

Both games are set in the beautiful and colourful island of Mauritius and feature a range of sporting and watersports events, including windsurfing, hang-gliding, cycling, swimming, kayaking, jetpack flying and diving. The games are designed for Windows gaming laptops, and use a webcam to track movements and children can play with interaction by the movements of their head, body and arms.

A team of Master’s and undergraduate students from MotionInput Games, a spinout from UCL Computer Science, steered the development of the touchless computing games. The technology uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), computer vision and machine learning, which recognises players and how their gestures or expressions relate to actions during gameplay.

https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/ucl-accessible-computing-our-schools

In the latest issues of able magazine which can be found here:

https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=33d28937-7307-468b-b781-7da8757b6fba

Page 17, 24-25 have interesting article of disability and keeping fit.