Building Accessibility into Social Virtual Reality Experiences
Thomas Logan completed the Edstutia Instructor Certification in Extended Reality (ICXR). He spent several months learning how to make immersive and engaging presentations in...
AR/VR/XR
Implementing an Accessible Virtual Twin for Learning in Virtual Reality
Christian Cousquer has worked in digital accessibility for 17 years. He’s an accessibility and immersive technology consultant in his company called Ilargia. He’s an information...
Accessibility Options in Virtual Reality Gaming: A Case Study with Myst
There’s no such thing as 100% accessibility. There will always be at least one person who prefers something different from the majority. If there’s one thing video games are known...
Virtual Reality Accessibility: How to Implement Multiple Locomotion Styles in Unity
Incorporating diverse locomotion styles in virtual reality (VR) is crucial for creating an inclusive and accessible experience. By offering options such as teleportation, arm...
Accessibility Virtual Reality: How to Add Captions Using Open Source
Closed captions provide another way for people to get audio information in various media formats, such as movies and TV shows. Captions are essential to ensure that dialogue, sound...
Virtual Reality Accessibility: How to Add In-App Display Settings
Meta has nine accessibility Virtual Reality Checks (VRC) for creating accessible virtual reality (VR) experiences for people with disabilities. This looks at Accessibility...
Accessibility Virtual Reality: User Studies with Children and Seniors Presentation
VRTogether designed a virtual reality social game that is designed to alleviate loneliness and improve a person’s well-being. Equal Entry worked with Azalee Group to see if using...
Virtual Reality: How to Implement Snap Turning in Unity for People with Disabilities
In virtual reality (VR), users can look around and interact with 3D objects inside a virtual world by wearing a headset and holding two hand controllers. Often, you have to...
How Do You Add Alternative Text and Metadata to glTF Objects?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines require all non-text content to have a text alternative provided. Though this requirement has existed for over 20 years, there is no...
Virtual Reality User Study with Children and Seniors in a VR Experience
Technology solutions often overlook children and seniors. So, Equal Entry worked with VRTogether and Azalee Group to design a user study to understand how children and seniors can...
孫とVR? VRで世代間交流に挑戦!!
This is the Japanese translation of the English blog post, “Virtual Reality User Study with Children and Seniors in a VR Experience.”...
Accessibility Virtual Reality: Augmented Reality Captioned Glasses
The augmented reality technology wave provides us with a chance to build accessible hardware and software solutions from the ground up, rather than as an afterthought. Xander and...
What Does a Blind Person Think about Virtual Reality?
Katsutoshi Tsuji joined our virtual reality (VR) accessibility research and provided a lot of insightful feedback. You can read what he shared in Virtual Reality Accessibility: 11...
Virtual Reality Accessibility: 11 Things We Learned from Blind Users
The current platforms and systems used in virtual reality (VR) technologies cannot be used by people who are blind. Equal Entry believes that VR should be accessible to all people...
Accessibility Virtual Reality: Accessibly (Re)Creating the Past
The reason Deb Mayers calls this (re)creation of the past is that we can’t ever be sure exactly what the past was like. The (re)construction with the parentheses around the “re”...
User Testing the Meta Quest 2 with Low Vision
Virtual reality is a visual medium. Because of this, you may be surprised to learn that there are many low vision and blind people who enjoy virtual reality. One of those people is...
Accessibility in a Virtual World Before Oculus
Accessible virtual worlds existed before virtual reality (VR) headsets. Virtual Ability has been designing accessible virtual world spaces for over 15 years. The team at Virtual...
Designing for Bodies: Accessibility in Virtual Reality
Designing For Bodies: Accessibility in Virtual Reality is about the challenges developers and designers face in building accessible XR experiences when the nature of XR is an...
Virtual Accessibility Mapping, Awareness Raising, and Real-World Advocacy
Encounters with barriers to built environments, education, employment, entertainment, and healthcare in virtual reality (VR) can shape our understanding of issues faced by diverse...
Adding Alt Text in Social Virtual Reality
Imagine trying to navigate a virtual space without being able to see the objects in it. If a host tells everyone to move to the outside space and you can’t see where is outside and...
Top 6 Things to Ensure Your Virtual Reality App Is Accessible
Thanks to the crisis, virtual reality growth is multiplying. Global spending on extended reality including virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, software, and services...
How Can a Blind Person Use Virtual Reality?
Accessibility advocate and legally blind gamer offers a deep dive into how people with low vision interact with Virtual Reality (VR), noting that while the technology can be...
Accessibility Virtual Reality Meetup: What Is It Like in Spatial?
Accessibility Virtual Reality (A11yVR) Meetup has held many of its meetups in Mozilla Hubs. We’ve had one in AltspaceVR. And now we’ve tried our third virtual reality environment...
How Virtual Reality Can Be More Accessible with WalkinVR
Imagine you’re wearing a virtual reality headset and sitting in a chair or wheelchair. You start playing Job Simulator. In one scene, you need to reach low to open the mini-freezer...
Accessible Multimodal Input in Augmented Reality Training Applications | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
In this talk, Ashley Coffey shares PEAT research on making immersive hybrid workplaces more inclusive and accessible. She reflects on themes explored in an “Inclusive XR in the...
A Voice For Virtual Reality: The Advocate’s Role | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
How anyone can advocate for virtual reality use in healthcare? How can they go about doing it in simple ways? In this presentation, Heather Bucalos covered how the advocate of VR...
Virtual Reality Accessibility: The Importance of Comfort Ratings and Reducing Motion
What is “Comfort Rating” and why is it important? Think about when you start watching a movie or a TV show. It’s common to see content rating at the start of the show. In the past,...
Adapting VR Games for People with Disabilities | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Beat Saber, Job Simulator, AudioShield, BoxVR, and many more games are engaging and very immersive. But they haven’t been accessible for everyone… until now. Players with...
Paradigm Shifts in Interacting With Virtual Environments: A Focus on Deaf People | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Zoom has thrived since March 2020. Obviously, COVID-19 prompted an interesting fundamental change in how to socialize and network with people remotely. But what about the 3D...
Introducing the XR Association’s Developers Guide on Accessibility | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
The XR Association promotes the dynamic global growth of the XR industry, which includes virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed-reality, and future immersive technology. XRA is...
How Virtual Reality Makes It Possible to Experience Different Vision Conditions
I’m nearsighted. When I was a child, my friends would often hold up two fingers making a V sign and ask, “How many fingers do you see?” “I can see the number of fingers, but I...
Can People with Disabilities Use VR? | ID24 Recap
Inclusive Design 24 (ID24) is a free 24-hour online event for the global community for sharing knowledge and ideas in inclusive design. For the first time in ID24 history, a...
Virtual Reality in the Dark: VR Development for People Who Are Blind | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Today’s commercial VR systems provide interaction methods allowing people with disabilities to experience gaming and virtual environments as never before. Aaron Gluck discussed...
Accessible Virtual Reality: Advice from a Deaf Person on How to Make It Better
Typically, I never shy away from new software and technology. However, the thought of diving into virtual reality (VR) feels daunting. Still, that doesn’t damper my excitement in...
Exploring Virtual Reality User Experience for People with Facial Palsy | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
The talk highlighted learnings about how to do research with people with facial palsy and the challenges of adapting the headset and creating experiences for them. Marg Laing and...
Captions and Beyond: Building XR software for all users | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Captions in cross-reality (XR) provide an opportunity for participants with language barriers or hearing and speaking differences to communicate across. This talk covered the...
The Past, Present and Future of Accessibility in Mozilla Hubs | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Hubs works towards the Mozilla mission of keeping the internet open and accessible to all by providing an ecosystem for communities, organizers, educators, artists, and developers...
What We’ve Learned from Hosting VR Meetups in Mozilla Hubs for One Year
Equal Entry founder Thomas Logan had the good fortune to present at one of the first virtual reality education-related conferences. After he presented at Educators in VR, he...
Accessible Virtual Reality for People with Limited Mobility | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Virtual reality (VR) offers new and compelling ways for users to interact with digital content. These include immersive experiences that are beneficial in various domains, such as...
Constructing an Accessible Social VR Environment: Interview with Pablo Cárdenas
We host a monthly Accessibility Virtual Reality meetup in Mozilla Hubs. The goal of the meetup is to continuously learn and document best practices for virtual reality...
Interacting with Objects in an Inclusive Virtual Environment
Roland Dubois and I are continuing our explorations of WebXR Accessibility. We’ve made an interface that is keyboard accessible, screen readable, and voice controllable (see “Does...
Oculus Has VR Accessibility Guidelines, But Audio Descriptions Are Missing
The Oculus Developer Blog has published a post in November called Introducing the Accessibility VRCs. These nine Virtual Reality Checks (VRC) are a set of technical recommendations...
Can You Identify Which Color Combination has the Greatest Contrast?
Roland Dubois and I are continuing our explorations of WebXR Accessibility. We’ve made our interface keyboard, screen readable, and voice controllable in “Does WAI-ARIA even work...
Haptics for XR – How designing great haptics can support use case accessibility | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On November 20, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “Haptics for XR – How designing great haptics can support use case accessibility”. Presenter Eric Vezzoli, Haptics...
Does WAI-ARIA even work with WebXR?
Roland Dubois and I recently started weekly meetings where we are working collaboratively to investigate and advance the state of accessibility in Web XR experiences. How many of...
Designing Augmented Reality Systems to Empower People with Low Vision | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On October 23, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “Designing Augmented Reality Systems to Empower People with Low Vision” Presenter Yuhang Zhao, Assistant Professor...
From Hack to Product Feature – How to Leverage R&D at Work Through Hackathons | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On July 16, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “From Hack to Product Feature – How to Leverage R&D at Work Through Hackathons.” Presenter Roland Dubois, Lead Product...
The Way for the VR World: FOR EVERYONE! | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
August 27, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “The Way for the VR World : FOR EVERYONE!” Presenter Nicolas Perret, 3dRudder Senior Principal Software Engineer,...
Ideas for A11y Programs in XR Tech Companies | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On June 18, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled Ideas for A11y Programs in XR Tech Companies. Presenter Bill Curtis-Davidson, former Sr. Manager of Accessibility at...
VR Interactions – A Comparison Between Gaze, Controller and Hand | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On May 21, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled VR Interactions – A Comparison Between Gaze, Controller and Hand. Presenter Sam Qorbani, a digital media designer...
Designing a Participatory Design Workshop | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On June 4, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “Designing a Participatory Design Workshop.” Presenter Indira Knight, design researcher and developer at the Helen Hamlyn...
Audio Descriptions for 360-Degree Video: Recap of Webinar
On Tuesday, March 14th, I hosted a webinar with Chancey Fleet titled, “Live Audio Descriptions for 360-Degree Video: Best Practices.” The webinar gave Chancey and I an opportunity...
Universal Immersive Design | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
On April 16, 2020, Accessibility VR hosted a Meetup entitled “Universal Immersive Design.” Presenter Doug North Cook, founding faculty for the Immersive Media programs at Chatham...
This Is What Happened at a Captioned Virtual Reality Webinar
With many employers switching to remote work and schools moving online, it’s no surprise there’s an explosion of video and conference calls. With that in mind, I’m thankful for two...
Designing Together: Co-Designing a VR Therapy | Accessibility NYC Meetup Recap
On March 3, 2020, Accessibility New York City hosted a meetup entitled “Designing Together: Co-Designing a VR Therapy.” Presenter Indira Knight, Design Researcher from the Helen...
Using Mozilla Hubs with a Screen Reader
I reviewed the Mozilla Hubs interface with our CEO, Thomas Logan using my JAWS screen reading application. I have added additional details on how to join the Accessibility VR...
Screenreader Experience of a Virtual Reality Conference
I am Rhea Althea Guntalilib, a totally blind digital accessibility ninja. I conduct accessibility and usability tests for different web and mobile products and services. With my...
Why It Matters Which Direction You Are Looking in a 360-Degree Video When You’re Blind
Equal Entry Accessibility Consultant James Herndon is presenting Live Audio Descriptions for 360-Degree Video: Best Practices at CSUN 2020. As a preview to his presentation, he...
The Latest XR Accessibility Findings | Accessibility NYC Meetup Recap
On November 12, 2019, Accessibility New York City hosted a meetup entitled “The Latest XR Accessibility Findings” at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Presenter Thomas...