CodeQuest is a FREE, interactive and accessible app for iPad and iPhone mobile digital device that teaches preschool to early-elementary age players coding, logic, and orientation skills. Download from the App Store here.
Created for use by students who are blind, visually impaired, and sighted, CodeQuest is ideal for use by an entire class! Help your astronaut move across a grid-style game board to his spaceship, so that he can explore the galaxy. In each of the game’s thirty levels, players (astronauts) start at row 1, column 1, and must program a route for the astronaut to follow to get back to his spaceship. Along the way, players also learn coding concepts such as problem-solving, planning, computational thinking, loops, and sequencing. Learn more and download the app here.
NOTE – if you use anything other than an iOS device to find this app on the App Store, your search will yield no results.
Supplemental tactile game board grids and manipulatives are available for download and embossing in the Downloads tab of this page. These can be printed from a tactile graphic embosser or regular embosser with a brf file.
Teachers can create tactile grids for this app by using other APH products, such as APH Bold Line Tactile Graph Sheets, Graphic Aid for Mathematics, and Hundred Boards and Manipulatives: Grid Board. For example, the manipulative tiles in the Hundred Boards and Manipulatives can be used to represent an astronaut, walls, and a spaceship. Sticking them onto the grid board of the kit can quickly create the grids used in the CodeQuest games.
The CodeQuest app can also be used with an accessibility switch (like AbleNet’s Blue2). One button can be programmed to move the cursor while the other is used to click.
Here’s what our TVI Field Testers had to say:
“Excellent for teaching mapping, giving directions, and coding. Straightforward expectations and game rules. My students loved this app.”
“My students and I appreciated the accessibility of CodeQuest. It made my students feel successful and accomplished.”
“My students were excited about the app and even requested to play it again once they had completed it. I could see this app as a benefit to my students with little or no vision. There are a lot of skills being taught in one game.”
Fun and easy to use for young students
Fully compatible with VoiceOver
Integrates fundamental coding concepts such as sequencing and looping into game play
Allows students to work on orientation concepts including up, down, left, and right
Motivates students to practice problem solving, planning, and computational thinking skills
Great for visually impaired students to learn access technology through game play
Great for blind students to practice tactile graphic reading skills
