A Practitioner Reflection on Accessibility in Virtual Reality Environments

In this paper the author reflects on the accessibility issues and solutions that are specific to the intersection of virtual reality and gaming. This is a complex and nuanced usability domain for developers as it brings to the fore numerous issues for people with disabilities that are not prominently expressed in the design of most gaming experiences. Issues such as simulation sickness, binocularity of vision, physical context and the spatiality of an environment are all significant. There is limited developer awareness as to best practice in this new and innovative domain, and often no clear answer as to what the correct approach is likely to be. This paper represents a synthesis of the existing literature in an attempt to identify and map out the key areas for future research. There are many promising opportunities for collaborations between industry and academia. There are many interesting challenges in this field. It is hoped that this paper serves as an initial exploratory study on where investigation should be directed to ensure the greatest impact of future work in this area.