As technological advances emerge more rapidly than ever, it’s essential that design takes disability into account.

By Simon Dermer co-founder and Managing Director of eSSENTIAL Accessibility

If the recent, updated 2.1 release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) demonstrates anything, it’s that technology is swiftly changing, and keeping up with it from an accessibility perspective is an ongoing effort. But that’s only because the needs of people with disabilities typically aren’t heeded from the get-go.

Technology is swiftly changing, and keeping up with it from an accessibility perspective is an ongoing effort
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WCAG 2.1 is a set of technical requirements for ensuring that websites and apps are accessible and inclusive. It’s developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international group of experts in this area, and is recognized and used all over the globe.

Ideally, all design, whether digital or structural or procedural, would consider the needs of people with disabilities from the start, just as it systematically takes into account the safety needs of children, the language needs of a bilingual population, or the temperature conditions under which the design will be used.

WCAG 2.1 is a set of technical requirements for ensuring that websites and apps are accessible and inclusive
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What happens instead is that successive advances in web, mobile and other digital technologies affect the day-to-day function and performance of people with disabilities in ways that vacillate between two extremes. They can make these individuals’ lives vastly better, yet often make them vastly worse.

Consider the simple task of ordering a pizza online. Twenty years ago, if you wanted a pizza delivery, you’d leaf through a restaurant flyer, choose your options, pick up the phone and call in your order. Online ordering offers conveniences because you can choose toppings quickly from your screen. With a mobile app, you can order from your couch or your backyard. You don’t have to wait on hold. You don’t risk misunderstandings with your order.

Ideally, all design, whether digital or structural or procedural, would consider the needs of people with disabilities from the start
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If you have a disability, the potential for convenience is even greater. Online ordering eliminates the need to retrieve and handle paper if you have difficulty using your hands. You don’t have to decipher writing on a flyer if you’re blind. You no longer face the problem of communicating by phone if you can’t speak clearly or you’re deaf.

It’s a solution that increases your independence and control over your own life – or, at least, your dinner.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that people with disabilities account for 15 percent of the world’s population, accessibility has not traditionally been top-of-mind for many companies as they scramble to bring their products and services into the digital age. Instead of increasing the independence of people with disabilities, as technology has the capacity to do when it’s designed properly, digital barriers increase isolation, preventing people with disabilities from using a product or service that has been made available solely to the other 85 percent of the population.

Despite the fact that people with disabilities account for 15 percent of the world’s population, accessibility has not traditionally been top-of-mind for many companies
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It’s about much more than pizza, of course. It’s submitting job applications, it’s searching for information, it’s participating in an online class, it’s booking a flight, it’s reserving concert tickets. If these online activities are not barrier-free, then people with disabilities are completely shut out.

Just as a building must have certain features like stairs and doorknobs replaced or eliminated in order for it to be usable by people with disabilities, so too does digital technology. And what’s more, it is vastly less complicated to modify a website than install an elevator. WCAG 2.1 provides an easy-to-follow, thorough guide to ensuring that a web page follows the four principles of accessibility: perceivable (the information can be detected), operable (it can be used and navigated), understandable (this applies to both the information and the functionality) and robust (it will continue to work for different users with different devices).

If these online activities are not barrier-free, then people with disabilities are completely shut out
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The truth is, technology that follows the technical requirements of WCAG 2.1 will actually be more perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for everyone, not just people who have disabilities.

For instance, how often have you accidentally hit the wrong link on a touchscreen because the touch target was too small? One of the requirements of WCAG 2.1 is larger touch areas, to ensure that people with limited hand dexterity won’t make a mistake. That’s something all users can appreciate. Requirements that make a web page usable by someone with partial vision, such as text that can be increased in size without interfering with other content, are a boon for those who reach middle age and develop issues with smaller text. A requirement to provide transcripts for videos allows everyone, not just people who are deaf, to do a quick search for specific content.

The truth is, technology that follows the technical requirements of WCAG 2.1 will actually be more perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for everyone, not just people who have disabilities
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W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative has compiled research and case studies supporting the wide appeal of and business case for accessibility.

WCAG 2.1 stipulates that web pages follow four principles of accessibility: that it be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust
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As technological advances emerge more rapidly than ever, it’s essential that design takes disability into account. It’s the difference between being inclusive of everyone, regardless of ability – or cutting off access to over a billion people around the world.

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Expert View: How Technology Can Shut Out People with Disabilities appeared first on Tech Trends.

A new documentary explores how embodying digital characters in virtual worlds like Second Life empowers people of all abilities to find their voice and identity.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax travels from Los Angeles to rural South England to tell the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse that exists in their computers.

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar
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This is not escapism, it’s augmentation
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Drax sends his documentarian avatar Draxtor Despres into the virtual universe of Second Life (SL) as well as next generation VR platforms like High Fidelity and Sansar to find out why a 40-something disabled Chicago native feels best represented by a colorful superhero gecko but Cody LaScala – confined to a wheelchair his entire life and interacts with VR via a trackball and his foot – makes his avatar an exact replica of his physical self and asserts that he doesn’t see himself as disabled, but rather as someone with “different abilities.”

“In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment,” explains researcher Tom Boellstorff, who together with his colleague Donna Davis conducted a 3-year study entitled “Virtual Worlds, Disability and New Cultures of the Embodied Self” with funding from the National Science Foundation.

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human - Deanya Schempp
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“This is not escapism, it’s augmentation,” says Boellstorff, whose research approaches the question from an anthropological perspective as a way to understand digital culture and how communities form and share information as social capital in the virtual world.

As Davis explains, virtual worlds like SL provide people with safe spaces where they can find and express their true selves: “People turn to Second Life to share very intimate conversations in a way they never would with a person in the physical world, because they feel they safely can.”

In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment
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By designing more inclusive technology the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone
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For those that speculate about the potential of social VR, it is interesting to note how inhabiting a virtual world allows these people to form and maintain meaningful relationships and connections with others, as SL user iSkye Silverweb recounts:

“I don’t think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf.  Communication IS an issue for me; I would always be concerned about it, with meeting anyone.”

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar, and how this – as one user puts it – “provides her with sustenance” and helps people to cope with all manner of both mental and physical disabilities.

As the recent death of Anthony Bourdain so painfully highlighted, mental health issues often amount to an “invisible disability,” yet in SL, Jadyn Firehawk explains how she could make her avatar visually represent her bipolar condition: “I made something in Second Life, I call it a ‘brain sling’.  When somebody wears a sling on their arm, nobody asks them to lift a heavy object.  A ‘brain sling’ or some equivalent of it, it IS a way of wearing a sign,” she says.

Interestingly, however, doing that seems to also have empowered Jadyn to find a new freedom of expression and achieve more within that virtual world. In SL, Jadyn is a Master Builder who has come to embrace a whole new set of abilities and creative skills which she actively shares within the community.

I don't think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf
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Deanya Schempp, who collaborated with Director Drax on the project, explains that she volunteered to do the closed captions for this movie pro bono, as she felt that the subject, the people, and the research deserved to be heard. What she didn’t realize, however, was the impact that project would have upon her personally:

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human. As I listen and watch, I come to understand that it is not these folks who are disabled: The disabled ones are the ones who will not be able to look beyond the cartoon appearance of virtual worlds, or even of this movie, to listen and learn from other human beings whose daily lives are so much different from their own. The disabled ones are those who cannot see beyond appearances to respect the human there.

“Disabled people just don’t think about their disabilities on a daily basis–or at least not until some insensitive blockhead points at us and reminds us we’re supposed to be this thing called disabled,” agrees Second Lifer Daisy Gator.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax tells the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse
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Over the course of the documentary, Drax and the various documentary protagonists also met (both virtually and physically) with technologists such as Philip Rosedale – Founder of Second Life who is now developing a new Virtual Worlds called High Fidelity – and Ebbe Altberg – Linden Lab’s current CEO – about how they intend to intend to design the future of social VR with disability in mind.

“We need to build highly extensible open-source systems that enable those who would provide varied forms of access and accessibility to the system to be at the table,” says Rosedale

By designing more inclusive technology, however, the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone, as Boellstorff concludes:

“If there’s one thing you learn when looking at these things is that when you’re inclusive and accessible it benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities.”

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Exploring digital identity through avatars https://t.co/YqNTtckyOs

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) June 11, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Finding our True Selves in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.