Serious Play, Serious Problems: issues with eBook applications

This paper explores the extent to which a digital technology (Apple i-Pad) supports the development of literacy skills. Literacy was traditionally deemed to include reading and writing and numeracy, but now encompasses digital literacies, the capacity to understand and even create the multi-media, multi-modal texts of digital technologies. Whereas once, basic literacy was considered essential to active citizenship, now there is a greater emphasis on this broader view of literacies. Along with the acknowledgement that individuals learn in different ways, there has been an emphasis on the features of digital technologies which facilitate the notion of "universal access", making text accessible in a variety of forms to people with disabilities. Multi-modal technologies, many supported by applications designed by third party developers, were seen, therefore, to offer significant opportunities for helping people, especially children, to develop literacy skills. Using the metaphor of 'serious play', this study has found that people with disabilities may still be unable to develop literacy through their 'play' in the same way as others. The study concludes that a set of heuristic principles needs to be adopted by the developers of applications for digital technologies, so that the digital playground is accessible to all.