Ashwini Rao
Saurav Verma- Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering, SVKM's NMIMS University, Mumbai, India
1 Introduction
In the current era of interactive digital applications, Serious games are designed with a primary purpose to educate, train, raise awareness and for developmental purposes. Unlike traditional video games, the purpose of serious games is to focus on learning outcome, behavior change and skill development rather than just fun. Typically for children with cognitive, emotional, or social challenges, serious games can be very helpful as it offers customizable, engaging and a motivating environment that normally is not found in a traditional teaching environment. As per the study its observed that children with disabilities often face difficulties in expressing emotions, they sometime find it difficult to adapt to standardized learning tools and few also face challenges due to limited social interaction. The above challenges hence highlight the need for having personalized approaches during development of customized serious games. Therefore, the role and involvement of parents in the design and customization of serious games becomes critical as they are the ones who possess deep insights into the unique need of their child as per their daily experience. Their feedback can help the game designers to ensure that the games being designed are both emotionally resonant as well as accessible to their children. The article explores how parents can be empowered to actively contribute to the design of serious games which will surely enhance the social and emotional development of children with disabilities.
2 Understanding serious games for children with disabilities
As per the recent studies, there is a growing interest in the usage of serious games as effective tools especially for supporting children with disabilities across physical, socio-emotional and also cognitive domain. In a study conducted and published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Ferreira and Parisotto, 2025), it was found that serious games like “Secret Agent Society” was helping children with ASD by significantly improving their social communication abilities. This particular game was designed in a way in which children were put in role play missions and they had to recognize emotions, engage in conversations, and also handle anxiety. The children who played these games showed a measurable improvement in few of their skills when compared with traditional interventions.
Research findings of the University of Melbourne (2022) indicate that Kinect-based games offer better balance and motor improvement in children living with cerebral palsy as compared to conventional treatment, and that they have stronger motivation levels. It is however limited by accessibility which is a problem in children with serious motor impairments since they may not handle the physical nature or scope of motion-based systems.
A serious game DysEggxia (Rauschenberger et al., 2022) was designed specifically for dyslexic children. It was reported that the children who played the game for a span of 6 weeks showed a good amount of improvement in fluent reading and also with accurate spellings. A study conducted on game REThink (David et al., 2019) showed that strategies for emotional regulation were learned more effectively by children with ADHD rather than through traditional therapy sessions alone. Therefore, for promoting both academic and non-academic skills, serious games are seen as good tools. The personalization and adaptability are the crucial features that must be considered during the design of these games as they will keep the motivation and engagement level of children high at all times. The summarizes few recent serious games that are designed for children with special needs is presented in Table 1 and the types of serious games w.r.t different disabilities visualize in Figure 1.
Table 1. Games supporting diverse learning needs.
Figure 1. Serious games for children with disabilities.
3 The role of parents in game design
Children with disabilities usually have several weaknesses like the inability to express emotions and an inability to use standardized educational instruments, therefore indicating the necessity to develop custom and inclusive interventions (Smith and Merwin, 2021). The involvement of the parents can be instrumental in creating serious game design in this respect. Parents provide original information about the daily life of their children, emotional drivers, and their communication patterns and make games more informative. For example, they may help in crafting the culturally relevant character and scenarios in the game so that its more relatable to the child. They may even assist in drafting the storylines that they feel their child encounters more frequently such as making friends, talking with a stranger, expressing frustration etc. Furthermore, the parents may also give inputs when it comes adjusting the elements of gameplay, like reward system, difficulty level so as to better align it with child's motivation and individual pace of learning. Therefore, it would be beneficial to treat parents as collaborators during the design of serious games rather than just as passive consumers. This will surely result in designing serious games that are more holistic, culturally aware as well as emotionally intelligent which will ultimately result in more effective and impactful learning tools for children with disabilities (López-Bouzas and del Moral-Pérez, 2025).
4 Benefits and challenges of parental involvement
As the parents understand their child's behavior, preferences and learning style more than anyone else, it's truly beneficial when parents are involved during the design process. This helps to get deeper insights into the child's need. The contribution made by parents during creation of storyline, cultural elements etc. in a game can make it more engaging and emotionally resonant for the child. Also, as they are the part of the game design process it's more likely that they will encourage its use consistently at home thereby maximizing learning and therapy outcomes. However, involvement of parents is not without its challenges. A common problem is that of the lack technical skills. Parents may not be aware of digital platforms or educational technology or maybe unsure about how to provide useful feedback on design and content. Additionally, there may be cases where parents' opinion can vary widely and this may pose a challenge for developers trying to create scalable solutions. Also, many parents of children with disabilities may have limited energy and time as they may already be balancing work, managing other responsibilities along with caregiving to their child with special needs. Therefore, the key here is to include the parents as valued partners by not burdening them with many tasks and not compromising on child's independence. Structured way for giving feedback, easy to use customization tools and a simple and usable design practice can help the developers to bridge this gap with the families.
5 Future trends and possibilities
New information technology will provide access to future educational games for children with special needs by equipping parents to customize educational gaming experiences. People in the game development sector will encounter wide-ranging disruptions from AI-powered no-code platforms and wearable assistive devices and no-code technology platforms.
AI-powered no-code platforms represent a radical development because they grant parents ability to create games even though they lack programming expertise. No-code platforms use artificial intelligence functions to create automated complex graphics that deliver automated characters with movement features alongside adaptive intelligent scene transition capabilities that react to detected obstacles. Parents access two options through a single-button interface enabling them to select pre-made templates or upload their own content to start designing games by choosing between written dialogue or spoken exchange inputs for personalized game development. Custom-designed games built by caregivers function to meet academic specifications while maintaining emotional assistance for their children.
The development of serious games demands precise decorative features which should integrate with assistive technology for better performance. Through integration of motion sensors and eye-tracking and speech interpretation technologies the AI system collects essential game information about child movement and pays attention to focus span and emotional status. Through this technological platform special needs children can build superior communication connections with other individuals. The evaluation of real-time data lets professionals establish personalized therapy methods through their analysis of collected information.
6 Conclusion
Involving parents in the design of serious games for children with disabilities can prove to be a powerful resource that still remains underutilized. The contribution of a parent toward this can help create games that are more engaging and deeply personal rather than being just educational. The games designed with such collaboration between developers and parents may in effect be more relatable and support the transfer of skills into real life situations. With some structured training programs and few workshops, we can further empower parents to take an active role in shaping educational technologies and ensure that serious games continue to evolve as an effective tool for learning and development tasks.
Author contributions
AR: Writing – original draft. SV: Visualization, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
David, O., Roxana, C., and Matu, S. (2019). Is REThink therapeutic game effective in preventing emotional disorders in children and adolescents? Outcomes of a randomized clinical trial. Eur. Child Adolesc. Psychiat. 28, 111–122. doi: 10.1007/s00787-018-1192-2
Faccio, F. M., Manzoni, S., Tartarisco, G., Gaggioli, A., and Caci, B. (2022). Liberi: a prototype of an exergaming platform to foster physical activity and social interaction in children with autism. Front. Virtual Real. 3:817303. doi: 10.3389/frvir.2022.817303
Ferreira, A. S., and Parisotto, G. (2025). Rethinking methodologies in nocturnal blood pressure dipping research: insights from Lopez et al. Acta Cardiol. 80, 529–530. doi: 10.1080/00015385.2025.2453799
Franceschini, S., Bertoni, S., Ceccato, I., and Gori, S. (2022). A video game improves reading skills in children with dyslexia. NPJ Sci. Learn. 7:22. doi: 10.1038/s41539-022-00128-4
Jaramillo-Alcázar, A., Venegas, E., Criollo-C, S., and Luján-Mora, S. (2021). An approach to accessible serious games for people with dyslexia. Sustainability 13:2507. doi: 10.3390/su13052507
Jia, Y., Chen, M., Li, S., Huang, L., and Ma, Y. (2023). Design and implementation of a somatosensory interactive game based on art therapy for children with autism. Front. Psychiat. 14:1207023. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1207023
Lin, C-. H., Chen, C-. L., Lin, C-. Y., and Wu, C-. Y. (2022). Interactive digital game for improving visual–perceptual defects in children with a developmental disability: randomized controlled trial. JMIR Serious Games 10:e34756. doi: 10.2196/34756
López-Bouzas, N., and del Moral-Pérez, M. E. (2025). Gamified environments and serious games for students with autistic spectrum disorder: review of research. Rev. J. Autism. Dev. Disord. 12, 80–92. doi: 10.1007/s40489-023-00381-7
Machado, L. S., Magalhães, C., and Mendes, D. (2024). Personalized serious games for children with rare neurodevelopmental syndromes: a reinforcement learning approach. Front. Psychol. 15:1372769. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1372769
Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T. A., Fromm, J., and Wohlgenannt, I. (2022). A systematic review of game-based learning for learners with disabilities. Front. Psychol. 12:814691. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.814691
Rauschenberger, M., Baeza-Yates, R., and Rello, L (2022) A universal screening tool for dyslexia by a web-game machine learning. Front. Comput. Sci. 3:628634. doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2021.628634
Smith, P. J., and Merwin, R. M. (2021). The role of exercise in management of mental health disorders: An integrative review. Annu. Rev. Med. 72, 45–62. doi: 10.1146/annurev-med-060619-022943
University of Melbourne (2022). Annual Report 2022. University of Melbourne. Available online at: https://about.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/422397/RFQ07703_AnnualReport_22-WEB-C.pdf
Wolinsky, H. (2021). A virtual world to help children with special needs. Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/kinems (Accessed January 31, 2014).
Keywords: parental involvement, serious games, disability and accessibility, inclusive game design, child-centered learning
Citation: Rao A and Verma S (2025) Empowering play: parents shaping serious games for disabled children. Front. Comput. Sci. 7:1620281. doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2025.1620281
Received: 29 April 2025; Accepted: 26 June 2025;
Published: 09 July 2025.
Edited by:
Irene Sotirios Chaidi, National Centre of Scientific Research Demokritos, GreeceReviewed by:
Elizabeth Vidal, Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa, PeruCopyright © 2025 Rao and Verma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Saurav Verma, c2F1cmF2LnZlcm1hQG5taW1zLmVkdQ==