Virtual Reality introduces a host of new considerations when designing inclusive environments and experiences.
This session is both a panel discussion and 3D experience. The panel will be on Zoom, and includes guests Mar Gonzalez Franco, a researcher at Microsoft, Dylan Fox of advocacy group XR Access, and Stephen Lee, an educator at Portland State University, exploring accessibility from the lens of research, community advocacy, and virtual education. A Mozilla Hubs 3D virtual tour (https://tinyurl.com/mozaccess) will be available throughout the festival showcasing accessibility techniques in VR and encouraging community contribution on how to make social VR more open and inclusive. The Hubs space is an ever-evolving archive, free for anyone to drop in at any time, regardless of participation in Mozfest. Your thoughts and contributions are welcome. Please find full info here: https://heaversm.github.io/mozfestaccess/
I welcome feedback and modifications to any of the Hubs Rooms to created a better experience for all users - including making the room more inclusive, dealing with bugs, and keeping content fresh. I also encourage people to remix these scenes for their own use, or share the links and present the content as they feel necessary.
I would love to stay in touch on relevant work, interested collaborators, etc. And for those creative folks out there - I would love to create better models, content, audio recordings, etc.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session? –The goals of this experience are:
• To familiarize the audience with various considerations that should be taken into account for designing inclusive virtual reality experiences, conveyed within the context they are being designed for (i.e. VR via Mozilla Hubs).
• To allow others to contribute their thoughts, designs, and knowledge on best practices for inclusive VR
• To foster discussion over the current and future states of digital accessibility and how it manifests itself in a 3D virtual environment.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session? –The hubs space is limited to 25 participants. Additional viewers can observe the room until there is an opening. The experience is just as easily viewed by 1 participant as 25 (in fact, perhaps it is a bit less "noisy" in that regard).
Additional rooms can be spawned from this scene link:
https://hubs.mozilla.com/scenes/reMD582
For larger groups, it might be helpful to have volunteers acting as guides or "docents" that take people through the experience. MozFest wranglers would be a great asset in that regard.
Creative Technologist, Prototyper, Designer & Developer
Stephen Lee is a designer and educator based in Portland, OR.
UX Designer and accessibility consultant specializing in XR. Member of XR Access. Researching AR for low vision at UC Berkeley. He/him. https://drfoxdesign.com