For many millions of users, 3D virtual worlds provide an engaging, immersive experience height ened by a synergistic combination of visual realism with dynamic control of the user's movement within the virtual world. For individuals with visual or dexterity impairments, however, one or both of those synergistic elements are impacted, reducing the usability and therefore the utility of the 3D virtual world. This article considers what features are necessary to make virtual worlds usable by such individuals. Empirical work has been based on a multiplayer 3D virtual world game called PowerUp, to which we have built in an extensive set of accessibility features. These features include in-world navigation and orientation tools, font customization, self-voicing text-to speech output, key remapping options, and keyboard-only and mouse-only navigation. Through empirical work with legally blind teenagers and adults with cerebral palsy, these features have been refined and validated. Whereas accessibility support for users with visual impairment often revolves around keyboard navigation, these studies emphasized the need to support visual aspects of pointing device actions too. Other notable findings include use of speech to supplement sound effects for novice users, and, for those with cerebral palsy, a general preference to use a pointing device to look around the world, rather than keys or on-screen buttons. The PowerUp accessibility features provide a core level of accessibility for the user groups studied.
In October 2005, the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center and T.J. Watson Research Center hosted a symposium on "cognitive and learning difficulties and how they affect access to IT systems". The central premise of the symposium was the recognition that cognitive and learning difficulties have a profound impact on a person's ability to interact with information technology (IT) systems, but that little support is currently being offered by those systems. By bringing together internationally renowned experts from a variety of different, but complementary, research fields, the symposium aimed to provide a complete overview of the issues related to this topic. This paper summarises the discussions and findings of the symposium
We take as our premise that it is possible and desirable to design systems that support social processes. We describe Loops, a project which takes this approach to supporting computer-mediated communication (CMC) through structural and intemctive properties such as persistence and a minimalist graphical representation of users and their activities that we call a social proxy. We discuss a prototype called "Babble" that has been used by our group for over a year, and has been deployed to six other groups at the Watson labs for about two months. We describe usage experiences, lessons learned, and next steps.
Shari M. TrewinVirtual worlds present both an opportunity and a challenge to people with disabilities. Standard ways to make such worlds accessible to a broad set of users have yet to emerge, although some core requirements are already clear. This paper describes work in progress towards an accessible 3D multi-player game that includes a set of novel tools for orienting, searching and navigating the world.
PowerUp is a multi-player virtual world educational game with a broad set of accessibility features built in. This paper considers what features are necessary to make virtual worlds usable by individuals with a range of perceptual, physical, and cognitive disabilities. The accessibility features were included in the PowerUp game and validated, to date, with blind and partially sighted users. These features include in-world navigation and orientation tools, font customization, selfvoicing text-to-speech output, and keyboard-only and mouseonly navigation. We discuss user requirements gathering, the validation study, and further work needed.
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