Tar Heel Gameplay - just ANOTHER great thing from UNC...

Hey Tek-ninjas! I've blogged a few times about the wonderful Tar Heel Reader site, made at my almamater, the bastion of all that's good, UNC - Chapel Hill.

Today I want to share with you a sibling site, Tar Heel Gameplay.

Tar Heel Gameplay, is an online platform which offers a collection of free, easy-to-play, and accessible games, as well as the platform to create your own games.

Each game is speech enabled and may be played using multiple access modalities, including touch screens, 1 to 3 switches, AND eye gaze.

Games are created using videos from the huge collection at YouTube. Users can play their own games or choose from the vast number of pre-made activities.

In the video below I create a simple activity with a Dead & Friends song, and play it using a Tobii Dynavox PCEye Mini and Gaze Point software for access. The music doesn’t come through, as I was also recording my talking.

According to the developers, Tar Heel Gameplay is being developed and tested in the Google Chrome browser, and they caution that it "may work in other modern browsers but save yourself some confusion and try it with Chrome".

These are simple games, and there-in lies the beauty. It is so easy to create a new activity, and with the endless variety of video available on Youtube, likely you can find something to interest everyone!

Tar Heel Gameplay has tremendous therapeutic value as an engaging way to hone switch or eye gaze access. Also, they are just plain fun.

Happy Therapy!

——————————-
Addendum: 02-19-2020: 7:10 pm

Hey Tek-Ninja’s, so this afternoon I received an email regarding the Tar Heel Gameplay site from one of the graduate students working on the site’s development. It read as follows;
“I'm a UNC student working on my honors thesis... I'd like people's feedback on the games we developed last semester so I can include it in my paper”.
When was the last time anyone in the weber-net had a program developer reach out and ask you what you think about their software? So, if you’ve used Tar Heel Gameplay, here is your chance to offer feedback that can potentially make a significant difference. 

I plan on completing the survey, once I’ve had a chance to play these new games.

Thanks!