Date: Monday, March 20, 2023
Category: General Session

Clinical centers often express frustration when trying to navigate the unfamiliar space of gaming when trying to gamify their rehab practices or work with a patient requesting AT for their gaming experiences. This presentation will focus on the open-source, market, and new developments in the adaptive gaming space as well as sharing resources to break down the barriers for clinicians and gamers to utilize this technology. We will share recommended best practices and information on how to start utilizing adaptive gaming in clinical, recreational, and educational settings. Gaming is now the largest entertainment industry in the world and growing fast. This industry can help prevent the higher rates of social isolation that people living with disabilities experience. With this, gaming needs to be accessible to all. Gaming is for everyone. We aim to continue to share our knowledge and experience in gaming for low-cost accessible solutions.

Learning Objectives:

1. Demonstrate the thought process, technology, and resources used in assessment and planning of an individuals gaming setup. This is demonstrated by using 3 examples from our pilot project research. 
2. Participants will be able to identify three groups of assistive technology that can be utilized for gaming and understand how to utilize them.
3. Describe the 3 major barriers that users experience when wanting to get into adaptive gaming. Illustrate the solutions to these barriers. The main barriers being cost, lack of familiarity, and lack of information. Audience will be able to know the barriers that gamers face as well as the clinical barriers.
4. Recommend a process for working with an individual needing AT to game. Demonstrate case study example of how to utilize these options in the flow chart.