Paper Available

Our paper is now available in the ACM Electronic Library. If you're unable to access it there you can send me an email or a message here and I'll get a copy to you. Please send an email to G.White at my university, sussex.ac.uk

Here are example citation data,

White, G. R., Fitzpatrick, G., and McAllister, G. 2008. Toward accessible 3D virtual environments for the blind and visually impaired. In Proceedings of the 3rd international Conference on Digital interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (Athens, Greece, September 10 - 12, 2008). DIMEA '08, vol. 349. ACM, New York, NY, 134-141. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1413634.1413663


@inproceedings{1413663,
author = {Gareth R. White and Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Graham McAllister},
title = {Toward accessible 3D virtual environments for the blind and visually impaired},
booktitle = {DIMEA '08: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts},
year = {2008},
isbn = {978-1-60558-248-1},
pages = {134--141},
location = {Athens, Greece},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1413634.1413663},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {3D virtual environments are increasingly used for education, business and recreation but are often inaccessible to users who are visually impaired, effectively creating a digital divide. Interviews with 8 visually impaired expert users were conducted to guide design proposals, and a review of current research into haptics and 3D sound for auditory displays is presented with suggestions for navigation and feedback techniques to address these accessibility issues. The diversity and volatility of the environment makes Second Life an unusually complex research object, suggesting the applicability of our work for the field of HCI and accessibility in 3D virtual environments.}
}

Paper Publication

Last week I returned from Athens where I presented our paper at DIMEA 2008.
I thought the presentation went well, with about 15-20 people in the audience. There were a few good questions at the end where we discussed amongst other things the use of synthetic verses naturalistic sounds for 3D spatialisation, from a semiotic point of view, and the potential of formal, structured data like VRML for environments like Second Life.

The presentation itself dealt with 3D virtual environments more generally than the paper, which uses SL as a case study. I demonstrated screen readers and AudioQuake as an example of 3D sonification in an audio game. All presentations in the conference were arranged by theme, and my paper was included in the track called "Social and Collaborative Spaces", so the emphasis of my talk was to raise awareness of the issues for blind and visually impaired users in these environments, and also to call into question just how "social and collaborative" they are when they exclude a sector of society. Following the previous day's excellent keynote by Professor Michael Meimaris, in which he talked about "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants" I coined the phrase "Digital Outcasts" in the context of rapidly evolving but inaccessible technology.

Please get in touch if you'd like a copy of the paper or presentation slides.

Power Up: The Game

As referred to in a previous post, some of the IBM folk have developed an accessible game called PowerUp which is described in the following paper,

@inproceedings{1358752,
author = {Shari M. Trewin and Mark R. Laff and Anna Cavender and Vicki L. Hanson},
title = {Accessibility in virtual worlds},
booktitle = {CHI '08: CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems},
year = {2008},
isbn = {978-1-60558-012-X},
pages = {2727--2732},
location = {Florence, Italy},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1358628.1358752},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {Virtual 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.}
}

My first impressions suggest that it's quite similar to Second Life in some respects (fixed name lists, Orientation Center).

I'd be interested to hear feedback from some blind or VI players.

Other Papers

Although our project's finished I've just coincidentally come across some interesting papers that seem relevant to our work,

Desurvire, H. & Wiberg, C. (2007). Master of the Game: The Crucial Role of Accessibility in Future Game Design. In Wiberg, C & Wiberg, M. (eds.) Proceedings of CMID´07 - The First International Conference on Cross-Media Interaction Design, March 22-25, 2007.


@inproceedings{1358752,
author = {Shari M. Trewin and Mark R. Laff and Anna Cavender and Vicki L. Hanson},
title = {Accessibility in virtual worlds},
booktitle = {CHI '08: CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems},
year = {2008},
isbn = {978-1-60558-012-X},
pages = {2727--2732},
location = {Florence, Italy},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1358628.1358752},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {Virtual 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.}
}

@inproceedings{354375,
author = {Jochen Schneider and Thomas Strothotte},
title = {Constructive exploration of spatial information by blind users},
booktitle = {Assets '00: Proceedings of the fourth international ACM conference on Assistive technologies},
year = {2000},
isbn = {1-58113-314-8},
pages = {188--192},
location = {Arlington, Virginia, United States},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/354324.354375},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{274525,
author = {Sandy Ressler and Qiming Wang},
title = {Making VRML accessible for people with disabilities},
booktitle = {Assets '98: Proceedings of the third international ACM conference on Assistive technologies},
year = {1998},
isbn = {1-58113-020-1},
pages = {144--148},
location = {Marina del Rey, California, United States},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/274497.274525},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{638263,
author = {Chieko Asakawa and Hironobu Takagi and Shuichi Ino and Tohru Ifukube},
title = {Auditory and tactile interfaces for representing the visual effects on the web},
booktitle = {Assets '02: Proceedings of the fifth international ACM conference on Assistive technologies},
year = {2002},
isbn = {1-58113-464-9},
pages = {65--72},
location = {Edinburgh, Scotland},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/638249.638263},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{1028657,
author = {Andreas Hub and Joachim Diepstraten and Thomas Ertl},
title = {Design and development of an indoor navigation and object identification system for the blind},
booktitle = {Assets '04: Proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility},
year = {2004},
isbn = {1-58113-911-X},
pages = {147--152},
location = {Atlanta, GA, USA},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1028630.1028657},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{634213,
author = {Calle Sj\"{o}str\"{o}m},
title = {Using haptics in computer interfaces for blind people},
booktitle = {CHI '01: CHI '01 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems},
year = {2001},
isbn = {1-58113-340-5},
pages = {245--246},
location = {Seattle, Washington},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/634067.634213},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{1321285,
author = {Mar\'{\i}a J. Ab\'{a}solo and Jos\'{e} Mariano Della},
title = {Magallanes: 3D navigation for everybody},
booktitle = {GRAPHITE '07: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australia and Southeast Asia},
year = {2007},
isbn = {978-1-59593-912-8},
pages = {135--142},
location = {Perth, Australia},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1321261.1321285},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

Publication

Our paper's been accepted for a conference in Athens called DIMEA 2008: The 3rd ACM International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment & Arts.

I'll include a citation and link to the paper when it's published.

Thanks once again to everyone who participated in this study. Without your input it would have been impossible!

Study Finished

Thank you so much to all of the people who participated in our study, and to those who offered but were not involved.

We've now concluded this research project and no longer need any more participants.

The result of this work was is paper which has been submitted to an academic conference for publication later on this year. We'll post more details when they're available.

Blind Volunteers Needed

[EDIT: 6th May 2008] This stage of the project is now complete, we're no longer looking for volunteers. Many thanks to those who participated.

---

For the next stage of our project we will conduct interviews with people who are blind or significantly visually impaired.

We'd like to take 30 minutes of your time for a voice chat to hear about your experiences of getting around in the real world, and any experiences you have of doing so in virtual worlds. The aim is to direct our further work developing interaction techniques for blind users in Second Life.

For more information please read the Explanatory Statement and Consent Form.

If you'd like to participate please send an email to Gareth White, G.White@sussex.ac.uk, confirming that you've read both of these documents and agree to the conditions listed in the consent form.