Events
2024 XR Access Symposium
The 2024 XR Access Symposium will be happening June 6-7 in New York City, with the theme “Insights from XR Assistive Technology.” Don’t miss out on this historic conference!
Upcoming Events
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
Past Events
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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