Accessibility and Mixed Reality

Agenda The world of Accessibility What is Mixed Reality ? Crossover of Accessibility and Mixed Reality Challenges faced by specially abled people in MR market Mitigations for these specially abled people based on different categories Conclusion Every technology that this in its inceptions face, We have been using this technology knowingly or unknowingly in our day to day applications This technology

Accessibility Historically, accessibility has been perceived as an afterthought – the final bullet point on a procurement brief or a competitive tender. It was a "nice to have if we had the budget" kind of an agenda item. No more. Accessibility can meet usability head on. What is great for disabled people is fantastic for everyone. In this room today I think 50 to 60% people are already aware about accessibility as we keep on having webinars, discussions on it occasionally. Our aim today is to bring in the rest of the people in so that everyone would not only know about Accessibility but also about the developments which are going around it in the form of Virtual and augmented reality. Typical categories of disabilities are Seeing, hearing, Interacting & learning.

Mixed Reality https://www.recode.net/2015/7/27/11615046/whats-the-difference-between-virtual-augmented-and-mixed-reality http://www.realitytechnologies.com/mixed-reality https://www.slideshare.net/YasminZahir/hci-virtual-reality-augmented-mixed-reality

Mixed Reality (contd.) https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/mixed_reality

Problem statement Are we excluding the potential customers ? Mixed reality is the most emerging trend & holds a lot for the future. But any technology in its inception phase looks toward establishing its roots rather than making it reach wider market or customer. Same has been the case with reach of Mixed reality to specially abled people. The emergence of Mixed reality is still in its establishment & has not yet looked towards grabbing accessibility market. But it holds the future and then they have to make it accessible for much wider audience. We would enlighten you all with the current situation of Mixed reality with accessibility guidance. Challenges & Mitigation.

Crossover of Accessibility and Mixed Reality

Visual Impairment Cons: Content heavily visual VR platform not designed to work with Screen Readers. There are no accessibility guidelines such as alternative text and meta information for objects. There is no accepted metadata standard for virtual worlds.

Visual Impairment Mitigations: Haptic feedback an alternate means of feedback to users. Web3D Consortium are trying to develop open standards, such as X3D, which can be integrated with HTML Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) can be used to aid virtual mobility and perception of shapes and colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution

Hearing Impairment Cons: Bluetooth latency impacts upon the ability of users to perceive visual and audio events synchronously. Some virtual experiences rely heavily on audible cues. Users may not be able to communicate using voice chat. Audio dialog requires captions. Sign language is not supported.

Hearing Impairment Mitigations: Haptic feedback remains alternate to audio instructions. Caption will make their virtual experience realistic since VR depends lot on visual aspects of virtual reality.

Cognitive Impairment Cons: The user interface may be difficult to learn Virtual world skills may be difficult to acquire Input devices such as wands, joysticks and 3D mice may be difficult to master Some users may experience vertigo Users may suffer from motion sickness, due to conflicts between sensory cues or between the virtual environment and what is felt be the body Flashing or moving objects may cause seizures or migraines

Cognitive Impairment Mitigations: The distraction offered by Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) has the potential to diminish pain perception amongst chronic and acute pain sufferers Virtual environments can be designed to support error-free training, which can assist cognitive disorders Students who need more training and time can usually replicate learning artifacts and interactions

Mobility Impairment Cons: Interaction in virtual environments often involves precise click targets. Users with mobility impairments may have difficulty using input devices such as motion controllers. Users with mobility impairments may have difficulty using head trackers to adjust roll, pitch and yaw. Users with severe mobility impairments may find locomotion, such as walking or flying, difficult. Users may have difficulty sensing haptic cues.

Mobility Impairment Mitigations: Virtual environments can offer users the ability to overcome real world physical barriers. Audio inputs can be used to move the user from one place to another. Avatars allows users to customise how they present themselves to others.

Conclusion - Preparing proper guidelines for use cases of these VR and AR apps - This is a growing market and we will need to gear up for their testing aspects as well The convergence of these technologies have just started & More & more organisations are coming together to speed up this process but there products are still in experimental or beta stage. This is the right time & opportunity for us "the testers" to come forward & think about our role in this domain. We need to put ourselves in these possible users shoes & educate ourselves about the challenges faced by different types of specially abled people so that we can help in making the world a better place for our friends who have the potential to grow beyond their & our own imagination.

Bibliography http://unimelb.edu.au/accessibility/guides/vr-old https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/mixed_reality http://www.realitytechnologies.com/mixed-reality https://www.recode.net/2015/7/27/11615046/whats-the-difference-between- virtual-augmented-and-mixed-reality