Dylan Fox: Excellent. Thank you, Chike, for that amazing keynote. I would like to welcome everyone once again to the 2021 XR Access Symposium. I'm Dylan Fox, the coordination and engagement team lead for XR Access and here with Jessie Taft, the Research Initiative Coordinator. At this point, Jessie and I will spend a few minutes to tell you about XR Access itself. I'd like to remind everyone that you can network with fellow participants on our 2021 symposium slack channel. So if you haven't heard of us XR Access is an organization with one purpose: Making XR technologies accessible to everyone. We're founded in 2019 as a coordinated effort of Cornell Tech, Verizon Media and supported by the Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technologies (PEAT) out of the Department of Labor. And today we are formally based out of a center at Cornell Tech. Now, we have a vision of a future where XR is accessible. this is a world where inclusive design and development becomes a core part of all XR creation. and everyone in the XR industry understands their importance. a world where resources on XR accessibility is well maintained and informed and in widespread use, a world where people with disabilities have a voice and playing active roles in shaping XR technologies and a world where, beyond ability, people of all ages, races, orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds can participate and make full use of XR technologies. So that sounds great. How are we actually going to do it? Well, we have broken down the work that needs to be done into three major areas and established a work stream for each one. These work streams are places where people from all kinds of backgrounds from tech to health care, education, government and more can come together once a month and collaborate with one another. Help each other understand the challenges that folks in each area face and help create solutions that work for everyone. The three work streams are, number one, inclusive design of XR, or idXR. This is the what. What does it mean for XR to be accessible? This workstream conducts lots of user research, extensive user research and firsthand experience gathering from people with disabilities. It does collaboration with groups of W3C, innovates on design solutions that can help solve some of these accessibility challenges. the second group is accessible development of XR, or adXR. This is the how. How do we actually create accessible software and hardware? This work stream focuses on making guidance for developers, laying ground work for the accessibility object model, that can help tools like screen readers work in XR and solving some of the practical problems of accessibility. Finally we have the business cases for inclusive XR, or bcXR. This is the why. Why does XR accessibility matter? Not only for all the good ethical reasons but why should business owners, product managers, investors, care about XR accessibility, beyond lip service? we want to lay down the reasons that accessibility is an attractive business investment so that designers and developers get the resources they need to create accessible solutions. All of these work streams are focused on users. We should never forget that people with disabilities need to be heard and a part of all of these conversations. and if you're attending the symposium, we want you to be part of the conversations. We need volunteers to join these workstreams and contribute not only their technical expertise but also their challenges. We want to understand what problems you're facing and how the people that have the opportunity to change these technologies to make them more accessible should be addressing them. So with that, I'll pass it to Jesse to talk about the Research Network and what you can do to help make XR more accessible. Jessie? 

Jessie Taft: Thank you, Dylan. So as Dylan mentioned the research -- whether in basic science, or in more complex applications, especially in a field like XR accessibility, relies really heavily on collaboration between scientists and open sharing of ideas in order to be successful. So to help make that happen we have created the XR Access Research Network, centered here at Cornell Tech, to connect researchers at universities, nonprofits and other organizations to one another and to the opportunities they need to advance their work and to address the scientific and societal concerns that will ultimately help and enrich lives. The network will provide the kind of practical and community support to researchers like facilitating network and research sharing, A regular seminar series to help researchers gain recognition and form and sustain new collaborations, and educational opportunities to help students develop into the next generation of leaders in accessibility research. In the future, we're also hoping to provide growth opportunities like seed funding for emerging research projects, and commercialize projects and translate them into real-world impact. So as you can see, between the workstreams and research network, there's a lot going on. a lot of activity that we will be sustaining over the coming years. And to do all of this, we need your support. Individual members of the XR Access community are the ones that drive the work stream forward, connect us across fields, and help us create impact where it's needed. If you're an individual member and you'd like to get involved more deeply, maybe you're not involved in a workstream and you'd like to be, we absolutely encourage you to reach out and we'll help you get more involved in a way that works for you. There are also opportunities for nonprofits, universities, and companies in the XR and accessibility space to join us at institutional members to support our mission to make the future more inclusive. Institutional members are going to help us by serving on our steering committee as leaders, and donations from corporate members will help sustain the Initiative's workstreams, research, and other programming. If you are interested in learning more about membership at any level, please get in touch with us and we would love to have you involved. And now I am very pleased to hand it off to Christine Hemphill, who is moderating our panel on designing for equity.