Children with a range of different abilities can now play in a virtual online playground launched by Gold Coast City Council in June.
Located at www.allabilitiesplayground.net.au, the All Abilities ePlayground is a free, online game that gives children with a disability a safe, creative and imaginative play environment.
Developed for Council by not for profit organisation Sonokids Australia, with support from Queensland’s Department of Communities, it aims to offer innovative, fun and accessible interactive online play for all children, with and without a disability.
Gold Coast Council’s Chair of Community Services and Cultural Development, Councillor Bob La Castra, said the virtual playground reflects the concept and natural surroundings of a local outdoor all abilities playground.
“We hope people visiting the real playground will connect it with the virtual one and vice versa,” he said.
“Both playgrounds give children of all abilities the wonderful opportunity to play in a fun, interactive and engaging way.”
The ePlayground is tailored for use with touch screens and assistive technologies like single switch and Puff2Play, in addition to more traditional devices like keyboards, mouses and joysticks.
Puff2Play involves users blowing a short puff of breath into the computer microphone to control movement around the site and within games.
The All Abilities ePlayground aims to:
- reflect an all inclusive and safe play
environment - offer fun, innovative and accessible ways of
interactive online play - stimulate and support imagination, skills
development and cognitive learning - allow a child with a disability to play as
independently as possible - create awareness and acceptance of
alternative ways to play - support integration and mutual understanding
by play and interaction.
Throughout 2009 and 2010, students and teachers from a number of Gold Coast schools put the All Abilities ePlayground through its paces.
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with the playground’s fun and games being accessed by children of varied abilities.
This included children with:
- print disabilities
- autism spectrum disorders
- Down syndrome
- cerebral palsy
- learning disabilities
- speech disabilities
- intellectual disabilities
- physical disabilities.
The ePlayground’s accessibility features have already seen it recognised as best practice by international awards program ACCESS-IT.
To learn more about the All Abilities ePlayground, visit www.allabilitiesplayground.net.au
Alternatively read more on the website of the Queensland Government’s All Abilities Playground Project at www.disability.qld.gov.au/community/all-abilities-playground/eplayground.htm
