I had the pleasure to virtually sit down with Regine MaryAnne Gilbert and talk about inclusivity and accessibility in XR. This has been our brief talk, from which I hope you will be able to find some interesting cues to work on a more inclusive and accessible XR ecosystem.
Hello Regine, can you please introduce yourself to my readers?
Hello, my name is Regine Gilbert and I am currently an Industry Assistant Professor at NYU. I teach user experience design and assistive technology courses.
You are a strong advocate for accessibility in XR. But what does exactly “accessibility” mean?
Accessibility in relation to the digital world means making experiences with people with disabilities in mind. For example, captions are provided on videos for people in the deaf and hard of hearing communities as well as those who may not be native speakers of a language.
You have written a book on the topic “Inclusive Design for a Digital World”. What can people find inside it?
The book is meant for those who are new to accessibility and looking to learn more about it. Inside the book, you will find an overview of designing with accessibility in mind, high-level HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, compliance, web standards, planning for accessibility, usability testing, and resources.
What do you think is the current status of XR experiences? Are most of them accessible?
As with all technology, XR is evolving. The current status in terms of accessibility is that more folks need to be educated about accessibility in the VR space. In general, most experiences are not accessible, yet.
Can you give us some examples of good ones in this sense?
Beat Saber allows the player to be seated, dodge pillar, and move your head.
Mozilla Hubs has added caption capabilities.
What are the most common mistakes?
Most people don’t consider accessibility from the start and consider it an afterthought. Accessibility can be incorporated into the beginning of a project and carry through to the end.
Can you give us some hints on the steps to perform to design an XR experience with accessibility in mind?
The first step is to educate yourself. Oculus For Developers has some documentation for Designing accessible VR. You can find it here:
https://developer.oculus.com/learn/design-accessible-vr/
What are the key areas around which an accessible design revolves around?
Accessibility offers players options. For example, could you provide the player haptic feedback in addition or instead of visual or audio cues? You will want to consider that there are various types of disabilities related to vision, hearing, mobility, and cognitive areas when creating an experience.
Most people working in XR are little indie teams. Is it possible to implement accessibility in your application while being on a budget?
Yes, it is possible to implement accessibility on smaller teams through education and partnering with folks with disabilities to co-design.
Talking about the actual implementation, are there any libraries and plugins already available for Unity/UE4 that can give indie studios accessibility solutions already ready out-of-the-box?
Yes! Here you are some:
- Open XR: https://www.khronos.org/openxr/
- UI Accessibility Plugin (Unity): https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/gui/ui-accessibility-plugin-uap-87935
- Set Color Deficiency Type (Unreal Engine): https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Widget/Accessibility/SetColorVisionDeficiencyType/index.html
How is it possible to test an application to verify that it results usable by the vast majority possible of people?
You cannot test with everyone, however, you can get a few folks to test. There are several communities of gamers willing to test games. I really like the organization Able Gamers Charity, they are a good resource. You can discover more about them at this link: https://ablegamers.org/
Talking about the hardware, instead, what are your remarks regarding the accessibility of current headsets and controllers?
Much of the existing hardware is not accessible for numerous reasons including the grip of controllers and weight of some headsets.
As someone who has issues with holding controllers for long periods of time, I think we have a long way to go from a hardware perspective in terms of accessibility.
How do you think accessibility in XR will evolve in the upcoming years?
In the coming years, I feel we will see a lot more consumer adoption of XR, especially with Augmented Reality. There is a lot of potential for improving lives with this technology and increasing accessibility within the space. I hope that people think of making products that will grow with them as they age.
Are there any resources about accessibility in AR and VR that you want to share with us?
I recommend the following:
- Handtracking & Accessibility read: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/new-oculus-open-source-library-and-pirates-demo-app-qa-with-developer-luca-mefisto-on-hand-tracking-innovation/
- A11y VR: monthly Accessibility in VR meetup: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqhCc1b6Cq69eg-iYeVKOog
- XR Access: Group working on XR and accessibility https://xraccess.org/resources/
- Locomotion Vault: https://locomotionvault.github.io/
- XR Accessibility User Requirements: https://www.w3.org/TR/xaur/
Inclusion is another theme in which you are very involved. What can we do as a community to improve inclusion in XR?
Inclusion refers to diversity in gender, socio-economic status, disability or other needs.
There is a great opportunity for creators to increase inclusion by thinking of who they might be excluding from the start. And then take the steps to begin to include them in the creative process.
What are your future perspectives?
My current research with VEIL (Virtual Experience Interaction Lab https://www.veilab.org/) involves examining Design Patterns in VR. My future work involves research into inclusive and accessible XR. In addition, I am working on a book that will be related to XR and spatial computing.
How can people support you?
You can check out my book that is available online at this link: https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484250150
As a developer, I admit that many times I’m guilty of having considered accessibility an afterthought, something to think about after the first versions of the application. After I have talked with Regine, I’ll try to consider it in the roadmap since the first design of an application. I thank her for having made me notice this error of mine, and I hope that she has inspired some positive thoughts inside you as well. It’s easy to forget about who is not inside “the majority” when you are rushing to ship a product, but actually, if we want XR to become mainstream and pervasive, we need to start thinking about the needs of everyone.
Have you always considered accessibility when designing your VR experiences? What are your thoughts after this interview? Let me know in the comments, here or on my social media channels!