adaPEtive

tabletop sports for visually impaired students

Ben Carnovale, Moriah Eley, Kasey Forsythe, Nate Ginck, Hannah Levine, and Rebecca Miller

Watch this video to learn about our project!

Our Motivation

The main goals of Ben Brilmyer's adaptive physical education class at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children are to build his students' confidence and motor skills.
This is difficult because few existing solutions for adapted physical education work well for the niche population at WPSBC.
Most games and activities lack collaboration between students and are especially less engaging for older students.
To deal with these issues, Ben Brilmyer and other staff, including other teachers and aides, have to improvise and create their own equipment to serve their unique students. However, this is taxing for the staff, and the students still don't get engaged in every activity.

Problem Statement

Students at WPSBC have varying degrees of visual and motor impairment and therefore require regular assistance in performing daily tasks. This makes participating in physical education activities difficult. Existing physical education activities are not accessible for all students, and there is minimal cooperative play involved.

Human Centered Design Methods

We wanted to get a better understanding of the niche population at WPSBC so we:
- Surveyed 25 staff members at WPSBC
- Interviewed 5 experts in adaptive education and sports, including teachers and specialists at the school and Dan McCoy, a Paralympic gold medalist in sled hockey
- Observed 6 PE classes at WPSBC
- Met with 28 students, tested with 14
- Iterated our design 4+ times based on feedback from Ben Brilmyer and observations from testing

Interview with teacher at WPSBC

Ben Brilmyer testing initial pretotype

Testing Prototype at WPSBC

Watch a video here of us testing to see our results!

Results

Accessible: Every student that we tested with was able to play our game.
Durable: Our current wood construction has held up in repeated transport to and from the school. The electronics and wirings could be enclosed and secured better, ensuring that they cannot come undone by anyone except the instructor.
Easy to Set Up: Current set up time is approximately 10 minutes. Our initial goal was 5 minutes, so although it can be set up in a reasonable amount of time, improvements can be made so that it can be set up more quickly, fitting the needs of a physical education environment.
Engaging: Students played for around 10 minutes each before new students were given an opportunity to play. No student stopped playing before their time to play was up.
Collaborative: Students were successfully able to play with other students.

Watch this video to see how we got to our current prototype!

How It Works

Pressing the button moves the motor arms and changes the color of the LED lights from red to blue.
When a player scores, the ball lands on a pressure sensor that makes the buzzer emit sound.
Powered by 9V power adapter
All inputs and outputs are controlled by RedBot Arduinos

Here is a modular game we have plans of implementing in the future: Skeeball!

Future Directions

We would like to use our current design goals to improve upon our design.

Specifically, we intend on:

Making the games easier to set up and maintain
Making the design more durable for long-term use

We would also like to develop modular games that can be easily incorporated into the main board (see left).

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff and students of the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, Ben Brilmyer, Dr. Joseph Samosky, Warren Lester, Jess Steinberg, and the rest of the Art of Making Instructional Team.

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