1. Accessibility Not An After Thought
Charles LaPierre
Technical Lead, DIAGRAM and Born Accessible
Co-chair Accessibility Task Force for Digital Publishing Interest Group

2. Accessibility Overview
Accessibility at W3C crosses all Domains and Disabilities
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Disabilities to Consider
Auditory
Cognitive
Neurological
Physical
Speech
Visual
Accessibility needs to be part of all aspects from research to implementation, education and outreach.
WAI-ARIA – is a specification that supports dynamic interactions on the web by making the content and applications more accessible to people with disabilities.
Some of the Accessibility Task Forces
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG)
Accessible Platform Architectures (APA)
Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force
Digital Publishing Interest Group Accessibility Task Force
The Task Forces work jointly with others such as Mobile.

3. Accessibility in Virtual Reality
Immersive Virtual Reality is Multimodal
Accessibility is fundamentally just providing the information presented in one form into one or more additional modalities which the user has control over.
Having Accessibility built in to the foundation of VR means anything built with this will be able to support accessibility.
There may still be things for the developer and/or content author to do.
Both the Inputs and Outputs must be made accessible
INPUTS: Speech / Keyboard / Switch / Gesture / Eye Tracking / Brain Wave
OUTPUTS: Tactile / Visual / Auditory / Olfactory / Gustatory
You already have visuals with auditory and tactile feedback
NOTE: not have just one input or output method for each modality the user is expected to interact with.

4. Innovation Support for New Breakthroughs
Accessible VR Shopping Experience
I can envision a system whereby the user puts on gloves, and a headset complete with video and audio, they can interact with a Minority Report style virtual menu system, but a visually impaired user could enable a self voicing option and have each shopping category, or item description spoken to them.
Proximity: More detail about items that are closer to you, or virtually “select” something and bring it closer to you to help with low vision.
Speech input (but consider users who can not speak, or speaks a different language)
Consider multiple disabilities such as a deaf-blind user may need the information sent to a braille or tongue display, or something else not yet invented.
Now finding the correct item they wish to purchase will involve heavy visual interaction, but here again having the ability to describe the items with varying degree of details.
Speech input could also help here to select a certain category straight away, although here again being able to select a category in multiple ways (Speech, Virtual Keyboard / switch input, or hand gestures)

5. Accessible VR Shopping Experience Continued
Think about this, when you go into an expensive shop to buy a suit or dress, not only do you use your eyes, but you use your hands to feel the fabric, and any sales person worth their weight will describe in great detail all the details of the garment.
So having this description available in multiple formats will make this a very pleasurable and accessible experience.
Visually Impaired may need to have that description spoken to them or sent to a braille display.
Hearing Impaired may need to have that description visually presented to them.

6. Accessibility – VR Charter Worthy
Make Accessibility a first class citizen and ensure that other Accessibility groups like WAI / WCAG / APA etc. are consulted
Build accessibility use-cases, and look for ways the general interfaces to accessibility, multimodal and innovating new ways to support that.
A Virtual Reality Specification should also support interoperability with assistive technologies that some people with disabilities need to use, this may require the need for an API

7. VR Example to help Disabled
using VR for training for new prostheses
using VR for balance re-training for people who've had strokes
adding emotional markup language (EML) to games or training to help people on the autism spectrum
As VR matures this will make its way into the classroom and having accessibility APIs will allow all students to enjoy this new emerging technology

8. Final Thoughts
How to make any VR application accessible to people with a range of disabilities
How to use VR to innovatively address new accessibility use-cases
Consider lessons learnt with making Videos and Images accessible

9. Thank You Charles LaPierre Technical Lead, DIAGRAM and Born Accessible
Skype: charles_lapierre
Phone:
This document was produced under U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs Grant No. H327B The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or polices of the Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned in this publication is intended or should be inferred. This product is public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. While permission to reprint this publication is not necessary, the citation should be: The DIAGRAM Center. ”Accessibility Not an After Thought,” Palo Alto, Benetech.