“This is essentially an enlarged Braille cell,” Julia Föcker explains, holding a device in her hands that looks like a game controller. Children place their fingertips on the buttons and experience haptic vibrations and different sounds. Through such multisensory interactions, they can detect Braille letters and guess corresponding words.

“We saw that children and teachers enjoyed interacting with the tool,” she says. “They also encouraged us to expand the device to support children with multiple impairments, including auditory, motor, and cognitive challenges.”

The tool was co-developed and tested with children and teachers around four years ago, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers and technical specialists, while Julia Föcker was based at the University of Lincoln in the UK. It has since undergone several design iterations, evolving from an early LEGO-like prototype into a refined handheld device.

Now at DPU, she aims to further develop sensory-based gamified technologies for children with multiple impairments and to integrate game-based tools into everyday classroom practice.

“The goal is to ensure that children with impairments have access to play, opportunities to learn through playful interaction, and meaningful ways to participate socially with their peers,” she explains.

Gamified technologies that support learning and participation

While her previous work primarily focused on children with blindness and visual impairments, upcoming projects will expand this target group to include children with additional or different impairments, such as deafness, motor difficulties, and various cognitive impairments. The development process continues to rely on close collaboration with engineers, computer scientists, teachers, and the children themselves, combining technical expertise with lived experience.

“These games are not designed only for children with impairments,” she notes. “They can also be played together with peers without impairments. Touch is a sensory modality accessible to many children. In my current research, I continue to co-create technologies that rely on accessible senses, building on work we started in the UK.”

From multisensory perception to inclusive play

Julia Föcker’s research focuses on multisensory perception and attention. She explores how the senses interact and how different sensory experiences influence engagement, participation, and learning processes.

Her research career has taken her to Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland. Her early work in Germany investigated how sensory deprivation affects auditory and tactile perception in individuals with blindness. Later, while working in the US and Switzerland, her focus shifted towards video games and the effects of enriched multisensory environments.

This trajectory naturally led to the focus of her current research on developing and evaluating accessible, engaging technologies for people who have lost, or cannot rely on, a particular sense.

“There are many exciting games built around visual interaction,” she says. “Tactile games exist, but they are less developed, even though touch is crucial for many people who wish to participate in game-based activities.”

Co-creation and classroom collaboration

Throughout her career, Julia Föcker has embraced interdisciplinary approaches. At DPU, she builds on this experience within a research environment that integrates educational expertise as an intrinsic element of technological development.

“DPU brings together leading expertise in inclusion research, anthropology of education, culture and learning processes, educational technology, and special needs education, and there are strong opportunities to advance collaborative research on technology, participation, and wellbeing. Within this interdisciplinary research community, I aim to contribute to and further develop a research focus on inclusive, multisensory educational technologies that are co-created with children and meaningfully embedded in classroom practice”, she explains.

This next phase involves working directly with such technologies in classrooms: inviting children to engage with the devices, systematically gathering feedback from both children and teachers, and co-creating tools that can be meaningfully implemented in schools.

“If children enjoy using these tools together, this may influence not only their attention and sensory engagement, but also participation and the social life of the classroom,” she says. “And this is exactly what we need to investigate next.”