Designing for Bodies: Accessibility in VR

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 embodied experience, and many standard methods of interaction and interface require complex bodily movements.

As the VRTogether team came to understand the core design pillars of their platform, they realized accessibility had to be a top-of-mind issue in all design conversations, otherwise, a significant portion of users within their target user groups would be alienated. The challenge for the VRTogether team has been in understanding how to build a novel VR social world with rich social and physical interaction accessible to as large a user group as possible.

In this presentation, Richard Hoagland will work through the case study of their first attempt to implement important content for VRTogether – an activity called Dot2Dot that fosters social interaction through two individuals solving a casual puzzle together – while ensuring the experience is fun and engaging for both users manipulating virtual hand switch controllers and those using gaze-based input. And importantly for the VRTogether team, supporting both interaction modalities at the same time to foster interaction.

Richard will share their findings with the hope of helping others with their own challenges around designing for accessibility in VR.

Attend this presentation to ...

• Learn how the VRTogether team used a design, build, and learn process to implement activities and accessibility features concurrently
• Learn the lessons the VRTogether team discovered along the way
• See an example of the Dot2Dot activity in action with both hand and gaze support
• Share personal knowledge and insights with the VRTogether team
• Participate in a group Q&A to brainstorm

Presenter Bio
Richard Hoagland is the founder and CEO of VRTogether where they are developing an evidence-based virtual reality platform to reduce social isolation and loneliness in vulnerable populations. Richard has worked for 10 years in virtual and augmented reality.

His accomplishments include launching Daydream Blue, the first social VR game for Mobile VR, winning Gold Prize in the 2015 Oculus Mobile VR Jam, winning 1st Prize in the Meta 2021 VR Hackathon, and being awarded a National Science Foundation SBIR for VRTogether where Richard serves as the Principal Investigator. Richard is passionate about finding the affordances of new technology that support unique solutions to provide a meaningful impact on people's lives.

Charles Baker is the Technical Lead at VRTogether. Charles has 20-plus years in software development and computer graphics programming. Charles has led high-profile projects across multiple Federal agencies dealing with congressional legislation. Charles has extensive experience in game design, as well as development in world-class game engines Unity and Unreal Engine.

Accessibility
The presentation will be captioned [cc]. The event will have real-time captions and a YouTube live stream.

Livestream
https://youtu.be/jRyGAogXERs

Sponsors
Thanks to Equal Entry for sponsoring.

Accreditation
All A11yVR meetups are pre-approved for IAAP Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAEC).

TIMELINE
Please NOTE: Meetup is not skilled in representing time zones. This Meetup is set in Tokyo, Japan so it will display differently than your local time zone. When you RSVP, use the "Add to calendar" link to receive a calendar invite transcribed to your time zone.

This timeline is based on the New York ET time zone.

7:30 - 7:45 PM
Thomas Logan introduction to A11yVR

7:45 - 8:20 PM
Presentation

8:20 - 8:30 PM
Q&A with attendees