Events
XR Access: A Retrospective
Dec 12, 2025
Before XR Access goes into hibernation at the end of the year, please join us for one last event. Our Director of Operations Dylan Fox will present a brief history of XR Access, give our community members a chance to share how XR Access has made an impact on their lives and careers, and we’ll collectively say farewell to the end of an era and discuss how to keep the dream of XR accessibility alive going into the future.
Planting Disabled Futures
Dec 3rd, 2025
Drs. Petra Kuppers and Laura Murphy will share a demonstration and discussion of Planting Disabled Futures, a multi-modal VR experience developed to share energy, liveliness, ongoingness, crip joy and experiences of pain. Engineers, designers, and practitioners can explore inclusive VR technology through this disability-centered project.
Did you Hear That Wink? Non-Visual, Non-Verbal Social Interaction Patterns from the Audio Game Community
Nov 12th, 2025
Ever wondered how blind gamers wave hello, give a thumbs up, or show they’re excited in online games? Join us as entrepreneur, researcher, and designer Brandon Biggs shares his research on how techniques from top audio game developers can be applied to make VR more accessible for blind and low-vision users and better for everyone.
Beyond Sight: Navigating the World Through Sound and Innovation
October 3, 2025
Discover Live presents how audio-described live virtual tours make world exploration accessible to the blind and low vision community. Learn about our tour development, guide training, extra sensory tour add-ons, and the vision for AI and XR usage to further transform how we experience destinations through technology and rich auditory storytelling.
Continue Reading Beyond Sight: Navigating the World Through Sound and Innovation
Community Discussion: Privacy and Accessibility
September 17, 2025
Privacy and accessibility are intimately intertwined. Technologies like facial recognition and real-time captioning offer incredible utility and independence to people with disabilities, but they come with intrinsic privacy risks. Join us for a community discussion on privacy and accessibility in the context of VR, along with featured speakers Dr. Brendan David-John of Virginia Tech and Alex Ambrose of ITIF.
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Virtual and Augmented Reality Input Accessibility for Individuals with Motor Disabilities
August 14, 2025
Join us as Dr. Momona Yamagami of Rice University shares how her research has the potential to improve the accessibility of XR inputs for people with motor disabilities.
Towards Building Accessible Virtual Worlds: XR for All and VRSight
July 16th, 2025
Join us as Daniel Killough of UW-Madison shares how his team has identified developer challenges in accessible XR and created a new tool, VRSight, that utilizes object detection, depth estimation, and multimodal LLMs to empower blind and low vision users.
Continue Reading Towards Building Accessible Virtual Worlds: XR for All and VRSight
XR Access Round Table
Every 4th Monday
Join us every fourth Monday for dynamic discussions about the latest research, groundbreaking products, and innovative solutions shaping augmented and virtual reality accessibility. This is a regular event that gives the members of the XR Access community a chance to connect and chat about the ups and downs of XR accessibility. Let’s build a more inclusive XR future, together!
If you require accommodations such as sign language interpretation, please email info@xraccess.org no fewer than 72 hours before the event.
Community Discussion: AI Accessibility Assistance
March 17th, 2025
AI represents a powerful accessibility tool for both virtual and physical environments, but there are many questions on how to best use it. Join us for an engaging discussion on the role of AI in enhancing accessibility. First, our featured speakers Yuhang Zhao, Andy Slater, and Thomas Logan will showcase a few AI-powered systems and their applications in real-world and virtual environments; then you, our community, will have the chance to brainstorm new uses and best practices for the future.
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Helping Hands, a D/deaf VR Community
March 30, 2025
Helping Hands is a volunteer-run community bringing sign language and Deaf culture to a wider audience through VR. Started in 2018, it has helped thousands of people around the world learn sign language and connect through Discord and the virtual reality platform VRChat. XR Access Director of Operations Dylan Fox will be joining a panel of Helping Hands community members in VRChat to talk about the impact VR has had on D/deaf communities, the challenges of signing in VR, and more.
This event will feature American Sign Language interpretation. If you require additional accessibility accommodations, please email info@xraccess.org no fewer than 72 hours before the event. Captions will be available at this link.
XR Accessibility Standards: The Missing Link
November 7, 2024
Accessibility standards are a core part of our legal and ethical framework for technology, but the standards for defining accessibility in extended reality are sorely lacking. Join us for an informational webinar about the Accessibility in the Metaverse working group of the Metaverse Standards Forum, and learn how you can be a part of shaping standards for the future of XR accessibility!
If you require accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language interpretation, please email info@xraccess.org no fewer than 72 hours before the event.
Continue Reading XR Accessibility Standards: The Missing Link
Community Discussion: Neurodiversity
September 24, 2024
Join us for a community discussion hosted by XR Access and the XR Association in which you, our esteemed community, can take on some of the biggest challenges in XR accessibility. This time: Neurodiversity. What are the potential sensory, task, and interaction challenges neurodivergent VR users face? What design strategies can VR applications employ to be more accessible to neurodivergent users?
With featured speakers Olga Ivanova, Kate Kalcevich, and Jazmin Collins join us in paving the path forward for neurodiversity accessibility in VR!
If you require accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language interpretation, please email info@xraccess.org no fewer than 72 hours before the event.
Accessibility in Walkabout Mini Golf
Aug 29th, 2024
Colby Morgan, Technical Director of Mighty Coconut, will showcase accessibility features for Walkabout Mini Golf and share his experiences as a low-vision developer.
Community Discussion: Alternative Inputs
May 23, 2024
Join us for a community discussion hosted by XR Access and the XR Association in which you, our esteemed community, can take on some of the biggest challenges in XR accessibility. This time: Alternative Inputs. How can people who have challenges accessing traditional controllers and interaction paradigms interact with VR? How can we ensure all kinds of input devices are compatible with XR devices? What are the best practices for customizing buttons and motion controls?
With featured speakers Jamie + Lion, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, and Rick Tett, join us in paving the path forward for alternative inputs!
If you require accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language interpretation, please email info@xraccess.org no fewer than 72 hours before the event.
Scene Weaving: An Interactional Metaphor to Enable Blind Users’ Experience in 3D Virtual Environments
May 2nd, 2024
Microsoft researchers will showcase Scene Weaving, a new approach to visual accessibility for 3D spaces.
IEEE VR 2024 – IDEATExR Workshop
XR Access will be cosponsoring a workshop on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Transparency and Ethics in XR (IDEATExR) in conjunction with the IEEE VR 2024 conference at Orlando, Florida USA, from March 16-21, 2024.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Guo Freeman, Dean’s Associate Professor in Human-Centered Computing at Clemson University, will be presenting her talk “Designing Inclusive and Safe Social VR Systems to Protect Marginalized Communities.”
Community Discussion: Captions
November 15, 2023
XR Access and XR Association are proud to present the next entry in the Community Discussion series: Captions! Leading with short presentations from captioning experts Yao Ding, Brenden Gilbert, and Lily Bond, this discussion gave you, our community, the opportunity to shape best practices for generating, presenting, and publishing captions in XR experiences.
REU Showcase 2023
August 4th
On Aug 4th, our 2023 Research Experience for Undergraduate cohort presented on their XR accessibility projects. Learn about neurodivergent-friendly VR, Saliency in 360 Videos, and more!
Designing for Assisted Reality + BCI
July 28th
On July 28th at 12pm PT/3pm ET, Sandra Feng and Cole Heiner of Cognixion presented on groundbreaking design work using assistive reality and brain-computer interfaces to advance face-to-face communication solutions for persons with Cerebral Palsy, ALS and Locked-in Syndrome.
Accessible Development of XR: Open Source Presentations
July 18, 2023
On July 18th, 2023, our XR Open Source Fellows Savio Menifer, Shivam Sharma, and Yuvraj Kadale presented their code and prototypes for accessible captions, locomotion, and display settings respectively, made in collaboration with Equal Entry.
Continue Reading Accessible Development of XR: Open Source Presentations
Workshop on VR Accessibility in Distance Adult Education
August 28th, 2023
As virtual reality (VR) technology becomes more pervasive, it continues to find multiple new uses
beyond research laboratories. One of them is distance adult education—the potential of VR to
provide valuable education experiences is massive, despite the current barriers to its widespread
application. Nevertheless, recent trends demonstrate clearly that VR is on the rise in education
settings, and VR-only courses are becoming more popular across the globe. This trend will continue
as more affordable VR solutions are released commercially, increasing the number of education
institutions that benefit from the technology. No accessibility guidelines exist at present that are
created specifically for the implementation of specific accessibility features for VR hardware and
software in distance education. The purpose of this workshop is to address this niche and formulate
a set of practical guidelines and its implementations for the use of VR in distance adult education to
make it accessible to a wider range of people.
To make it happen we would like to invite researchers and practitioners who represent the fields of
distance education, virtual reality, and accessibility, as well as those with combined experience in
these areas. We encourage people that are interested in new forms of distance education to join our
debate on the opportunities and challenges of the application of VR in their fields—even if they lack
prior experience with the technology.
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Community Discussion on Haptics and Accessibility
February 28, 2023
The XR Community Discussion on Haptics took place on February 28th at 11am PT / 2pm ET and featured presentations from leading industry figures Bob Crockett, Ashley Huffman, and Dhruv Jain, followed by an open audience discussion of best practices for addressing how haptics can help XR utilize the sense of touch for immersion and accessibility.
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Augmented Reality Obstacle Avoidance | Dylan Fox
January 31, 2023
How can augmented reality amplify vision to support obstacle navigation for people with limited sight? Join UC Berkeley researcher and XR Access Head of Community and Outreach Dylan Fox to learn about Augmented Reality Obstacle Avoidance. This research project showcases the opportunities and challenges faced in leveraging AR as an assistive technology, such as using digital cues to improve the contrast of physical obstacles and pointing out hazards that users might miss. With AR devices growing ever more popular, this work hints at how they may follow the smartphone in becoming powerhouses of accessible technology.
Continue Reading Augmented Reality Obstacle Avoidance | Dylan Fox
Inclusive Immersion: Inclusive Design of Immersive Content
November 29th, 2022
Continue Reading Inclusive Immersion: Inclusive Design of Immersive Content
Community Discussion on Audio Cues in Virtual Environments
September 22, 2022
As we continue to explore bringing accessibility to XR technology, we identified the need to examine audio cues in immersive environments. XRA and XR Access partnered to host a 90-minute session comprised of industry experts and the public to identify if lessons learned in the application of audio cues in 2D games can be applied to immersive experiences to benefit the blind and low vision communities. Nearly 70 people registered for the event, and we were joined by three featured speakers to probe into the topic. A recording of the session can be viewed here. Notes from the session, including helpful resources, relevant links, discussion topics, and transcripts, can all be found here.Continue Reading Community Discussion on Audio Cues in Virtual Environments