Client
CHI 2024
My Role
UX Researcher
Team
Vinaya Naikar
Shwetha Subramanian
Timeline
May - July 2023
✨ Accepted into CHI'24 Proceedings ✨
This study has been accepted into the CHI'24 journal proceedings. Click here to read the paper.
Context & Introduction
What is the prevalence of accessibility features in VR experiences?
As the usage of VR continues to surge globally, it becomes imperative to ensure the inclusivity of experiences. However, evidence points to VR experiences not always being accessible despite the availability of accessibility guidelines. One recent example was the HTC corporation receiving a lawsuit in 2020 for the lack of captions in VR experiences, making it inaccessible to deaf people. This made us wonder what other accessibility features are missing from VR experiences, which motivated us to investigate the prevalence of accessibility features implemented in free VR experiences for the Meta Quest 2.
Discovery
Main categories for disability as per existing guidelines
There are existing VR accessibility guidelines by W3C’s Accessibility User Requirements and Meta Quest’s guidelines for accessibility. According to W3C’s XAUR Guidelines, the main categorizations for disability are -
Visual
Research has investigated using haptic feedback, sound and visual filters to create experiences for visual disabilities. Example, SeeinVR to solve the issues of visual accessibility as an afterthought by making minor accessibility implementations to existing features.
Audio
Audio-related disabilities are generally focused on utilizing subtitles, labels, visualizers, or volume adjusters to help elevate critical audio over others to help curb the inaccessibility of experiences. Games like Fortnite that use visualizers and subtitles, as well as allow players to adjust the volume in their experience to improve access for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) users.
Mobility
VR can benefit rehabilitation or be fun experiences for wheelchair users and people with motor disabilities. WalkIn VR is an application on Steam that allows people with a mobility impairment to adapt VR games (e.g., WalkIn VR provides assisted gameplay for wheelchair users to access positions and locations in the virtual space by adjusting their height and range of movement across applications).
Neurological & Cognitive
Similar to the easy-to-use functionality of video games, virtual reality can incorporate easy-to-follow tutorials, training, and readily available help features to decrease the cognitive load on users.
Speech
It helps to have alternate modes of communication in the form of quips or gestures. VRChat allows users to use emojis, emotes, and gestures in the form of Helping Hands to communicate without the need for text-to-speech or additional physical equipment.
Defining the scope
We utilized a Python script to extract data on the names of all free VR experiences available on the Oculus Quest Store. Our script gave up a list of 121 free VR experiences. We then inspected each of these experiences individually to see if they were all available for download.
Upon individual inspection, we found 106 free VR experiences available for download
Out of the 106 free VR experiences, 7 were demos, and 2 were free trials for subscription-based applications. 9 VR experiences were 2D, i.e., they were not 360-degree experiences and could be accessed within the Quest home screen.
We then planned to examine each of these 106 experiences individually against the established VR accessibility guidelines. We chose the Meta Quest 2 headset for the review, due to its popularity with consumers and intentionally chose to examine free VR experiences as they can be accessed by anyone who owns a headset, without any additional cost.
After inspecting 106 VR experiences against established accessibility guidelines, we found…
67 VR experiences had at least one accessibility feature.
39 VR experiences offered no accessibility features.
Out of the 67 experiences, we note that the majority (41) only had between 1-3 features. These were mostly tutorials, language, and help features and rarely had an emphasis on other accessibility categories.
VR Chat was the only experience that had as many as 18 accessibility features in a single VR experience.
The remaining experiences had less than 10 accessibility features, with 25 falling in the range of 4-10 accessibility features.
Overall, there was a discrepancy in the number of accessibility features implemented and the number of accessibility features required by an experience.
This table consists of a list of categories that were based on the guidelines offered by W3C’s XAUR, Meta and the consolidated list of guidelines from Heilemann et. al. The numbers within the brackets indicate the total number of VR experiences with the accessibility feature present against the number of experiences that could benefit from the corresponding feature. Note: Abbreviations in this table are as follows: Sens. = Sensitivity, Subs. = Subtitles, Alt = Alternative, M.S. = Motion Sickness
Our Interpretation
Through our analysis, we found minimal emphasis is placed on incorporating accessibility features. One reason for this might be that despite guidelines existing, the accessibility guidelines provided by the three sources are for consideration without much consequence for not following them. Furthermore, there could be challenges related to not understanding how best to implement suggestions. Finally, some creators may not know there are guidelines out there. Inaccessibility in older and more traditional platforms such as web, mobile and video games has been commonplace, and it seems the trend continues in this space of immersive technology.
What we recommend
We also propose several ways to address VR accessibility by refining guidelines, fostering an inclusive work culture, and developing specialized tools for creating inclusive experiences.
Establishing Specific Guidelines: Existing accessibility guidelines should be refined to help VR designers and developers in the accessibility feature implementation process. It is also not sufficient to suggest that VR experience creators consider adding these features but important to also provide directions with examples on how these features can be implemented.
Reforming VR Work Culture: Many free VR experiences can come from small companies or even independent creators who are likely to have fewer resources compared to large companies. Prior work has highlighted access to resources has an effect on how likely accessible design is to be implemented. Therefore, it is important for HCI researchers, especially those working in the domain of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), to explore and understand the workplace settings of VR creators to identify issues contributing to what we found.
Accessibility Friendly Tools for VR: We also recommend that accessibility and HCI researchers continue to explore creating accessibility tools to support VR creators. The focus should be on enhancing the existing tools to support the creation of accessibility features for VR experiences.
As a future work, collaborating with VR creators could help us understand their work flow
Our work plays a vital role in understanding the current prevalence of accessibility feature implementation. Using this knowledge, it would be useful to work with VR designers and developers to understand why we have identified a lack of implementation, and what support will help.
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