Designing a Dementia-Informed, Accessible, Co-located Gaming Platform for Diverse Older Adults with Dementia, Family and Carers

The ABLE.family project deploys disability and crip approaches and universal design, to create a platform that engages diverse older adults with dementia (OAD) and their carers in social engagement and play. Our prototyped gaming platform, created with OAD stakeholders and carers aims to decrease loneliness and despair experienced by OAD and carers during the COVID-19 pandemic, by increasing opportunities for intergenerational family engagement. Pleasurable interactions are encouraged through real-time collaborative play (e.g. art and turn based games) and real-time video-calling embedded in the platform. Our human-centered design approach works with OAD and their carer networks to design the platform interface with features that can be used to effectively collaborate, interact and produce sustainable platforms for OAD and their carer community. This project is supported generously by funding from CABHI (Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation), the Alzheimer Society of Hamilton and Halton, and MIRA (the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging); resources and spaces supporting this work are provided by Pulse Lab (funded by the Asper Foundation) and McMaster University.