MR Speaker Series: Creating an Accessible Virtual World for Everyone

Due to an unforeseen emergency, we will not be hosting today's event. We will reschedule this for a later date and hope that you will all be able to join us. We will post more once we have a new date in place.

Creating an Accessible Virtual World for Everyone.

Virtual reality experiences must include accessibility features for people with disabilities. Not having an accessible experience can be the deciding factor as to why someone does not use the technology, simply because they cannot. The goal of this talk is to identify how and where we can introduce features to create inclusive and accessible VR experiences for everyone.

Mariah Hart is a Technical Program Manager on the AltspaceVR team at Microsoft. Mariah has served on a variety of teams and roles at Microsoft such as: a software engineering role building customized AR/VR apps for enterprise customers, PM role on backend software for Windows, and now serves as a PM on the AltspaceVR team focusing on making the VR platform accessible to all users and ensuring that the product maintains a high bar of ethics, privacy, and security. Mariah has also provided mentorship to students at the PerkinsHacks hack-a-thon at Perkins School for the Blind where students worked alongside the blind community to create technical and social solutions to enable a more inclusive world.
Outside of work, Mariah enjoys spending time with her husband and son.