Ballyland Sound Match is a fun sound-matching audio game that challenges listening and memory skills. The game is engaging and fun for all and designed to particularly support learning by children with blindness and low vision. This makes it the perfect game to enjoy together with siblings, friends, and parents!
While busy navigating the touch screen to locate, memorize and pair the matching sounds, children will build a basic understanding of how a digital grid is built up from rows and columns.
The game requires the use of a small number of basic TalkBack finger gestures: Finger drag, single finger double tap, and single finger flick left/right and up/down. If necessary, children who are blind can develop these foundation gesture skills with the acclaimed ‘Ballyland Magic Plus’ educational game app, from the same developers.
Play Ballyland Sound Memory’s ‘Black Curtain’ Challenge!
- In Settings, select Flick Mode, 6 cards, and your favorite sound set, and turn on Black Curtain. Choose Back to Settings, then Okay, to return to the main menu. Select “Play” to start the game.
- Gameplay: Do a one finger flick right/left or up/down to move around the game grid, and use the spoken information to remember your position on the screen. Double tap anywhere on the active screen to hear the sound of the card that you have flicked to, and try to flick to its matching twin. Remember: Flick changes the focus; If you don’t flick anywhere, a double tap will keep giving the same sound.
- Remember your score. Then double tap the hotspot in the bottom right corner of the screen to return to the Main Menu. Then it’s the next player’s turn.
Tactile support
Wheelie is the ‘face’ of Ballyland Sound Match, and in Flick Mode he follows every flick! Have Wheelie printed as 3D learning tool, to enable the child to tactually explore Wheelie’s features, including his turning wheels. Download the free 3D print file here (quality 3D printer required).
Ballyland Sound Match Features
- Audio game
- Built-in speech
- Talkback accessible before start of game, and accessible menus
- Digital game grid (spoken rows and columns)
- Three game modes (Drag, Flick, and “Open Sounds & Flick”)
- Six sound sets, including the popular Ballylanders
- “Black Curtain” option to create level playing field for all
- Fun, safe and supportive learning environment
- Reintroducing popular Ballyland characters and sounds
- Designed with feedback from adults and children with vision impairment, parents and teachers
- Use at home and school
Develops
- Orientation and spatial awareness on a touch tablet
- Listening, locating, memory and matching skills
- Conceptual understanding of a digital grid
- TalkBack finger gestures/ fine motor skills
- Experiential learning of TalkBack accessibility by sighted players
“As a teacher, working with children around the world, I have witnessed how Ballyland apps allow children with and without a visual impairment to play and learn together. Ballyland Sound Match is not only a fun game, but it also helps children to acquire important skills preparing them for use of technology and mathematics. I have combined this app with tactile diagrams which help children born blind create a mental picture of rows and columns shown on the tablet and make conscious choices of how they want to move around the grid in search of matching pairs. This way Ballyland Sound Match can also be used as a mobility activity preparing children for understanding floor plans of buildings and maps. The possibility of blended teaching and multi-sensory learning Ballyland Sound Match offers makes the application a particularly useful resource which highly benefits children with blindness and vision impairment." Prof. Bogusław ‘Bob’ Marek, Ph.D. OBE, Founder of Hungry Fingers, Poland.
Thankyou
We would like to thank the children, parents, teachers, and consultants who have tested this app all through the development stages and have this way helped Sonokids to make it better and better!