Circle Game Collaborative--Freddie the Frog

Families who have children with disabilities experience more challenges in interacting with their children than families who have children without disabilities. This increased level of burden results in higher rates of emotional stress and hardship for those families. Motivated by the idea of making deeper connections between children with disabilities and their parents, our gaming platform is designed around two key concepts - human touch and collaborative play. Using wearable sensors, conductive fabrics, microcontrollers, and wireless communication, our gaming platform will register and interpret "touch" as a way to interface with game apps and the devices they are installed on. In other words, touch is translated into player input. Thus, rather than interact with an iPad directly, children and their parents interact with each other instead. Our platform engages both parents and children with disabilities equally in order to better focus on their shared physical expression. As touch can be registered from any part of the body, our platform can be used with children with any type of disability and allows for both active and passive participation by children with a severe disability.