Accessibility and Computing A regular publication of the ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

In this project, we are exploring how to support therapists who use commercially available motion-based videogames in their therapies for people that have had a brain injury. Our exploratory work, that included interviews and observations at the Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital (SRH) in Chicago, Illinois, exposed a need for informational tools to help therapists make evidence-based decisions about games based on their therapeutic goals and their patients’ abilities and preferences. The study protocol was later expanded to include twoweek diary collection periods; data from the diary forms will be used as ‘seed cases’ for a case-based reasoning (CBR) decision tool that could suggest game choices to therapists. Additionally, we are expanding the study to the Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital (MRH) in Wheaton, Illinois in fall 2013. We believe that through this effort, we will be able to (1) equip therapists with informational tools that will help them in their work and (2) inform design of therapy-centered games that address current limitations of commercial games. 1 Overview and motivation The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US recognizes that brain injuries are a major public health issue; the CDC estimates that in the US 1.7 million people sustain a brain injury (BI) annually (CDC, 2012). Clinical experience and literature have identified that it is often challenging to motivate BI patients to engage in the repetitive exercises commonly prescribed for rehabilitation (Betker et al., 2007; Gil-Gomez et al., 2009). As a result, many therapists include commercially available motion-based video games in their therapy sessions to help make repetitive actions fun and engaging. (Commercial motionbased videogames are those that use consoles, e.g., XBox Kinect, Nintendo Wii and Sony Move, and are played using gestures and/or specialized controllers). The long-term goal of this work is to establish knowledge about motion-games in BI therapy in order to (a) support therapists who use (or want to use) commercial motion-gaming in their work with BI patients and (b) game designers who design (or want to design) motion-games for BI rehabilitation. Previous research has supported commercial motion-games as effective motivators for performing rehabilitation exercises (Alankus et al., 2010). Moreover, research has supported commercial motion-games as effective in meeting therapeutic goals for BI patients, including improvements in balance and range of upper extremity motion (Flynn et al. 2007). While this work is encouraging, it has focused on small samples; as such, commercial motion-game efficacy across a wide range of BI patients has not been established. The first objective of this work is to establish commercial motion-game efficacy across a wider range of BI patients than in previous work. As part of this objective, we are exploring