XR Access Research Network
The XR Access Research Network fosters a diverse community of researchers pursuing academic-style research across fields and disciplines which have a shared interest in making XR technologies accessible, enabling innovative research, new collaborations, resource-sharing, and translational impact.
Join the research network for updates on current research, funding opportunities, research recruitment, and more!
The XR Access Research Network aims to foster academic-style research across fields and disciplines, with a shared interest in making XR technologies accessible, enabling innovative research, new collaborations, resource-sharing, and translational impact.
The Research Network holds regular seminars and conversations, supports emerging researchers at the undergraduate and graduate levels, creates networking and collaboration opportunities among research groups and between academia and industry. We also bridge the gap between researchers and disabled communities.
If you’d like to participate in the Research Network, we’d love to hear from you! You can join as an individual researcher via our application form. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via email at info@xraccess.org.
If you’d prefer to participate in research directly, we’re always looking for research participants, especially those with disabilities and/or XR experience.
Past Seminars
All are welcome to register for the XR Access Research Network’s Seminar Series. Stay tuned for an announcement of the next seminar.
Does VR Have an Accessibility Problem? | Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco
February 2, 2022
In this talk we explore the special challenges of VR with regards to accessibility. In VR and more in general spatial computing, users find themselves entering the digital content through wearables, and interacting with content with their own body. This means that if they have any bodily limitation this limitation will carry on to VR. In some cases it might even mean they won’t be able to wear the headset. In this talk we also present some work done to deal with this challenge.Continue Reading Does VR Have an Accessibility Problem? | Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco
Making Mobile Augmented Reality Applications Accessible | Jaylin Herskovitz
December 8, 2021
Augmented reality (AR) technology creates new immersive experiences in entertainment, games, education, retail, and social media. AR content is often primarily visual and it is challenging to enable access to it non-visually due to the mix of virtual and real-world content. In this work, Jaylin and her coauthors identify common constituent tasks in AR by analyzing existing mobile AR applications for iOS, and characterize the design space of tasks that require accessible alternatives. Continue Reading Making Mobile Augmented Reality Applications Accessible | Jaylin Herskovitz
Designing Technologies to Make Virtual Reality Accessible for People with Visual Impairments | Dr. Yuhang Zhao
November 19, 2021
Today, VR mainly relies on realistic visual feedback to provide an immersive experience that is only accessible to sighted people. Most VR applications are not accessible for people with visual impairments (including people who are blind and people with low vision), preventing them from benefiting from this important class of emerging technology. In this talk, I’ll describe my research collaborations with Microsoft, which focused on designing technologies to make VR accessible for people with visual impairments, as well as discussing design guidelines for accessible VR. Continue Reading Designing Technologies to Make Virtual Reality Accessible for People with Visual Impairments | Dr. Yuhang Zhao