Usability and accessibility of toys and technologies for play for children with disabilities: Scoping review of guidelines and tools.

For creating play opportunities for children with disabilities toys, games, apps, robots, and other technological products are as important as for typically developing children. Above all the products have great potential for inclusive play. However, many anecdotes from clinical practice and data from research show the challenges in finding and choosing a suitable toy or technology, in evaluating these play objects on their usability and accessibility for given children, in designing and producing a toy usable for all children. This paper describes the scoping review carried out to investigate: (1) which guidelines and tools regarding usability and accessibility of toys and technologies for play for children with disabilities exist, (2) what is their possible use for different stakeholders involved in play for children with disabilities, (3) what are the strengths and the weaknesses of the guidelines and tools. For this review, sources identified by experts, different databases, and hand-made search results were considered, which yielded to a final set of 15 guidelines on usability and accessibility of toys and technologies for play for children with disabilities that was explored in detail. Each guideline was reviewed by two reviewers using the adapted AGREE II instrument. The review resulted in the selection of 10 guidelines on usability or accessibility of toys and technologies, only 5 had a specific focus on play. For most of the guidelines the rigour of the development and the supporting evidence were not described. Further research and development is needed, as adults involved in play for children with disabilities need support in handling or creating the appropriate toys and technologies.