XR Accessibility & Instructional Design

Photo of ramp going up gradually in a building bathed in light blue colors.

The topic has come up again. I guess I should start being happy that it’s coming up again and again. The topic is accessibility versus XR as instructional designers see it. The throw-down response of some instructional designers is “XR is not accessible” and they discard it as real learning option for the future.

Capture of social media post with text: I have had, and continue to have concerns about the accessibility of IR & VR in education.

So I gathered 7 examples (current as of August 2022) of organizations and people working FOR accessibility and I posted them. I’m re-sharing them here.

This is quick in – out, giving IDs examples they can quote that XR is gaining ground on accessibility.

I hold to my premise:

In general, people care and they want MORE people to enjoy XR versus less.

Sound

Just this week, the FrameVR platform (a good example of WebXR) announced live captioning along with translations. https://twitter.com/gabriel…/status/1561793880835575808…

Technology

WebXR in general is good for smartphone access which can help with
internet access and speed accessibility problems too.

I recently
attended a conference session with examples of how low access continents
like Africa are racing ahead with WebXR. https://youtu.be/le1WHqtiBzM?t=7164)

Sight & Mobility

Organizations like EqualEntry produces video interviews with designers and testers. I would recommend these 2: VR for the blind https://youtu.be/CjILBKqOZ3g and VR for the physically disabled: https://youtu.be/lwmAFHAj6EI

Cognitive (& All)

XRAccess is another organization that is heavily working on standards https://xraccess.org/
– these will show up for IDs as *defaults* when we work with platforms
in the future (READ: default closed captioning, default bubble spaces,
default no flying, etc.)

I’m gearing up to talk more about Virtuleap, VR for cognitive exercise & monitoring, on my social media channels. https://virtuleap.com/

Vision

There are even efforts to use VR to combat the negative effects of VR (READ: vertigo.) https://youtu.be/E6jFqqy0wes

But
if you explore nothing else from an ID perspective the first 1:30 of
this video shows that accessibility is gaining ground…https://youtu.be/rvsZ1ssyom8

This article is not meant to be exhausting and lord knows I love the
research teams out there working on these topics. Hey neurodiversity & medical XR research teams, I see you!! They are doing SO
MUCH.

Don’t count XR out when it comes to accessibility. Not by a long shot.

Organizations to watch

#Accessibility #XR #WebXR #EqualEntry #Virtuleap #XRAccess #FrameVR #MozillaHubs #Vision #Sound #Mobility #Cognitive #VirtualReality #AR #MR

Simultaneously posted to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/xr-accessibility-instructional-designers-dodds-ph-d-