“The ark of rights”: development of a board game to empower older adults regarding their rights

Abstract

There is an urgent need to ensure the rights of older adults. In particular, there is a lack of awareness of human rights by older adults themselves, for which intervention strategies should be developed. Due to the need for intervention at this level, a board game was created to empower older adults regarding their rights using a dynamic and interactive method. This article aims to describe the development stages of the board game “The Ark of Rights”^® up to its pilot study. Its development followed three stages: A first phase to review the scientific literature and benchmarks on the rights of older persons, a second phase to define the game design and collect statements from older people for the game, and a third phase to test the game. The European Portuguese Validation of the System Usability Scale (SUS) was used to assess the latter phase. Approximately 200 older people contributed to the game’s contents (second phase), and 74 participated and positively evaluated the game’s usability and their satisfaction with its use (third phase). In summary, the game “The Ark of Rights” revealed itself to be a resource for empowering older adults regarding their rights. It also enables the identification of possible human rights violations among older adults and subsequent intervention.