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.
We’re also looking for research participants and testers – sign up here!
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.
Research Network Seminars take place on the third Tuesday of each month at 12pm ET.
If you’d like to participate as a partner in the Research Network, we’d love to hear from you! You can get in touch with us via email at shiri@xraccess.org.
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.
Making Virtual Reality More Accessible for Persons with Balance Impairments | Dr. John Quarles
June 21, 2022
Although consumer level virtual reality (VR) head mounted displays (HMDs) (e.g., HTC Vive) are becoming more prevalent today, these VR developers typically do not consider persons with disabilities, such as persons with balance impairments (e.g., persons with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, or stroke). Thus, many immersive VR applications, such as education, physical fitness, rehabilitation, and entertainment, are not accessible to users with balance impairments. (more…)
Multimedia for Deaf Viewers | Dr. Raja Kushalnagar
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people have relied on assistive and accessible technologies/services to consume or produce aural information. Some hard-of-hearing people rely on an assistive technology approach to enhance aural information for easier perception and understanding. Other hard of hearing and most deaf people rely on an accessible technology approach to transform the aural information into visual or tactile information for easier perception and understanding. (more…)
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. (more…)