[Sportsandrec] Statistics on Fitness in Blind Community

[Ashley Bramlett]

Erin,
Thanks for sharing. Wow, a  video game to be accessible; this seems cool

-----Original Message----- 
From: Erin Kavanagh
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2012 10:23 AM
To: sportsandrec at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] Statistics on Fitness in Blind Community

Hi All,
I thought the following might be of interest to the discussion. The links 
for the downloads can be found on this website (http://www.vifit.org/) which 
has exactly the same info as below. I also happen to know that both a 
baseball and a downhill skiing game are in development.
Cheers, Erin K

VI Fit
Lack of physical activity is a serious health concern for individuals who 
are visually impaired as they have fewer opportunities and incentives to 
engage in physical activities that provide the amounts and kinds of 
stimulation sufficient to maintain adequate fitness and to support a healthy 
standard of living. Especially children with visual impairments tend to 
exhibit lower performance in motor skills, lower levels of physical activity 
and fitness, and higher levels of obesity. Exergames are video games that 
use physical activity as input and which have the potential to change 
sedentary lifestyles and associated health problems such as obesity. 
Unfortunately exergames are not accessible to users with visual impairments 
as they rely upon the player being able to see visual stimuli. The VI Fit 
research project seeks to explore how exergames can be developed that can be 
played without visual feedback, with the goal to increase the participation 
of users with visual impairments in physical activity and to improve their 
health. All VI Fit games can be downloaded for free and played using low 
cost motion sensing controller (called the Wii Remote) capable of providing 
vibrotactile and audio cues.

Pet-n-Punch
Pet-n-Punch is a novel exergame inspired by whack-a-mole. Help a farmer 
protect its fields of carrots by bopping varmints on their head..... but 
make sure not to hit any kitties! This game you can play with either one or 
two Wii remotes. This game gives you a much higher workout than our other 
two exergames (bowling / tennis). Download Pet-n-Punch.

VI Bowling
VI Bowling implements the gameplay of Wii sports Bowling. VI Bowling has a 
novel motor learning feature that allows players to find the direction in 
which to throw their ball using vibrotactile feedback. Audio and speech 
effects are used to indicate the result of each throw. VI Bowling was 
evaluated with six adults and was found to yield levels of active energy 
expenditure that are comparable to walking. Download VI Bowling.

VI Tennis
VI Tennis implements the gameplay of Wii sports Tennis. This game provides 
audio and vibrotactile cues that indicate when to serve and when to return 
the ball. You can play this game against the computer or against a friend 
using two Wii remotes. VI Tennis was evaluated at Camp Abilities with 13 
children who were blind and we found our game to engage children into levels 
of active energy expenditure that were high enough to be considered healthy 
(For more info see research paper about VI Tennis). Download VI Tennis.


Requirements and Downloads
To play VI Tennis and VI Bowling all you need is a Wii remote ($30) and a 
windows PC with bluetooth support or alternatively a USB bluetooth dongle 
($15) can be used. When you run the executable an installation wizard will 
install the game and place a link on your desktop. Prior to playing the game 
you will need to connect the Wii Remote, see the README for installation 
instructions. If you have problems setting up the game or you have feedback, 
do not hesitate to contact us at feedback at vifit.org. VI Tennis and VI 
Bowling executables and source code are distributed under the Gnu General 
Public License. Anyone interested in contributing to our project please 
visit the VI Fit developer pages. VI Fit is a collaborative research project 
between Dr. Eelke Folmer and Tony Morelli (Ph.D candidate) of the University 
of Nevada in Reno, Dr. John Foley of SUNY Cortland and Dr. Lauren Lieberman 
of SUNY Brockport. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.


Publications
Tony Morelli, John Foley, Lauren Lieberman, Eelke Folmer. Pet-N-Punch: Upper 
Body Tactile/Audio Exergame to Engage Children with Visual Impairments into 
Physical Activity, Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI) To Appear, St 
John. New Foundland, May 2011.

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Eelke Folmer VI Bowling: A Tactile Spatial 
Exergame for Individuals with Visual Impairments , In Proceedings of the 
12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and Accessibility 
Pages 179-186, Orlando, Florida, October 2010. [slides] [video]

Tony Morelli, John Foley, Luis Columna, Lauren Lieberman, Eelke Folmer. 
VI-Tennis: a Vibrotactile/Audio Exergame for Players who are Visually 
Impaired, Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Interactive Games (FDG), 
Pages 147-154, Monterey, California, June 2010. [slides]


Acknowledgements
This research supported by NSF Grant IIS-1118074
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this 
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views 
of the National Science Foundation.




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