September 4, 2019
Ludo and Snakes and Ladders are board games that many children love
to play. Thanks to heritage architect and access consultant Siddhant Shah,
these games can now be played by children who are blind and low vision as
well.
Games period has now become cause for much excitement at the Kamla
Mehta Blind School in Dadar, Mumbai. Everyday you find students
gathered around a table playing Snakes and Ladders,
Ludo, X&O to name a few.
These popular board games that so many children love have been made
accessible to children who are blind and low vision thanks to
Siddhant Shah, the heritage consultant and founder of
Access for ALL. Siddhant has made many well-known heritage
sites and museums in India accessible to people with disabilities.
Siddhant says he was inspired to think of making board games accessible a few
years ago while working on a tactile Braille project for a prominent art
gallery. He then started looking closely into the means of recreation for
children at blind schools in India.
I was looking at ways and means of recreation at blind schools in India and
when I was visiting the Blind Relief Association in Ahmedabad, I saw
children playing with a ball that made a sound. When the Lions Club, Juhu
said it was looking at recreational means for blind girls, we pitched the
idea of accessible board games to the donor and he was quite keen.
–Siddhant Shah, Founder, Access for ALL
These games have been introduced on a pilot basis at the Kamla Mehta Blind
School, one of India’s oldest blind schools for girls. Siddhant and his team
worked with the teachers to figure out how the kids occupy themselves and
realised that only a few kids could play board games as they faced issues
with the size of the board, fonts, colours, etc. Together with his team, he
created a few prototypes and after a few months arrived at something they
could all enjoy. “We worked on the font size, used textures, created physical
divisions and indications, etc., so they were accessible”.
The outcome, says Alka Mehta, a committee chairperson at
Lions Club Juhu, is quite magical.
“It was so terrible for the children to be sitting around in school all day
long. We wanted them to experience the joys of games and play like other kids
and we loved Siddhant’s idea of board games they could touch and feel. This
is the first time a school in Mumbai is doing this and we are so happy with
what he has created. Now, everyone is excited about the games period”.
Mehta hopes that more blind schools in India will introduce these games. “If
we get more donors, we would be happy to take this across to more schools”.
School principal Varsha Jadhav says she is looking at
extending the games period. “This way the girls get more time to play and the
best part is that the size of the board games is large so many girls are able
to play together. This has totally transformed the mood during games period”.
Siddhant says he has received enquiries from blind schools in other cities
like Ahmedabad and Jaipur. “If we find donors, we could take it to more
children”. The games, he says, are not just fun but also help in building
fine and gross motor skills.
ALSO READ: Be it paintings or photographs, this architect uses Braille to
make art accessible to everyone
