- Type
- Undergraduate thesis project
- Institution
- Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore
- Programme
- Human Centred Design
- Approach
- Ludic design
- Recognition
- Selected by the Microsoft Research team, Bangalore; submitted to the TACT Grand Challenge, CTIS 2022
- Users
- Blind and visually impaired players, age 8+
- Year
- 2022
Why board games
Board games are good for players well beyond the fun of them: they build communication, problem solving and social skills, and they depend on people sharing the same physical space. They are also almost entirely visual. Nearly everything a player needs to know is printed, so a blind player is either excluded or handed a separate, adapted version and left playing alongside the group rather than in it.
India has roughly 40 million people who are blind or visually impaired, including 1.6 million children. Board game accessibility is barely studied, and most research that exists focuses on sensory substitution in digital games rather than on the physical objects families already own.
Design for empathy, not sympathy — one game, played by everyone.
Research
The project was built on time spent with the people it was for, not on a literature review alone:
- Observing classrooms and sessions for children with special needs
- Interviews with parents and mentors
- Game sessions with children, and masterclasses
- Volunteering at a Mitra for Life event for parents and children with special needs
- Conversations with the founder of the Chiranthana organisation and with members of Mitra Hubba
What parents and teachers said
Teachers were clear that every child learns differently, which makes a rigid syllabus unworkable; children of very different ages and levels learn together in the same room. Parents described learning through repetition, and named the practical failures of most toys and games: poor contrast and colour, and surfaces with nothing interesting to touch. One parent's observation shaped the whole design — if things are always brought to a child, she never learns where they are or that she can choose for herself.
The goal
To build a board game playable by blind and visually impaired people that also reinforces speech therapy and communication — and to make it a game everybody plays, not an adapted edition. Housie is the right host game for that: the outcome turns on luck, so no player's ability decides who wins.
The game
A standard housie ticket is a nine-by-three grid with 27 spaces, five numbers in each row and four blanks. Full Housie! keeps that structure exactly, and adds two tactile layers: braille numerals, and a row of embossed shapes that spell out the number's value.
Rather than searching the whole ticket for a called number, a player reads the sequence. Everything — text, shapes and braille — is embossed with spot UV printing on 300gsm stock, so the ticket is read by hand and by eye at the same time. The set includes rule cards and value cards in braille and English, and ninety number cards.
Shapes and values
The numbers 1 to 90 are broken into five shapes that are already familiar to visually impaired children, which also turns the ticket into a calculation:
Gameplay
- Each player starts with an empty board.
- A caller or mentor draws numbers at random and announces them.
- Players mark off numbers on their ticket as they are called; fifteen numbers per ticket.
It works in large groups and small ones, and it is designed to be played by mixed groups. Sighted players and parents can blindfold themselves to play it the way everyone else is playing it — the point being empathy through participation rather than a demonstration.
What it teaches
Full Housie! exercises visual discrimination, coordinated use of two hands, in-hand manipulation, process and functioning skills, and leisure participation. Because the shapes carry values, the ticket doubles as a calculation aid, and mentors can use it to teach both arithmetic and braille. It also reinforces speech therapy and communication, which matter most in the early years.
Underneath that is the social argument. Exclusion, powerlessness and previous experience of being left out feed social anxiety. A game decided by luck, played on identical tickets, hands power back to the player who is usually accommodated.
Reflection
Articulating the line of inquiry was manageable; ideation was the hardest phase, and the useful discovery there was that stepping away from the project regularly was part of the work rather than a break from it. The project began during lockdown, out of an interest in the special needs community, and ended as a piece of design that a family can put on a table.
Thesis guides: A.V. Reji and Sonu. With thanks to the children, parents and mentors who gave their time, and to the LDA team for feedback.