Asleep at the Virtual Wheel: The Increasing Inaccessibility of Virtual Reality Applications

Anderton, Craig and Creed, Chris and Sarcar, Sayan and Theil, Arthur (2025) Asleep at the Virtual Wheel: The Increasing Inaccessibility of Virtual Reality Applications. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25), 26th April - 1st May 2025, Yokohama, Japan. (In Press)

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Abstract

Prior research has highlighted numerous accessibility barriers within virtual reality software, with guidelines emerging to address the requirements of diverse audiences. However, an empirical understanding of industry practitioner implementation of accessible guidelines within mainstream commercial applications is currently lacking. This review addresses this gap by categorising all accessibility features presented at a software-level in 330 of the most used virtual reality applications released between 2016 to 2023 on the Steam, Meta, Oculus, Viveport, and SideQuest platforms. Results suggest a growing lack of interaction customisation, with the number of applications allowing for alternative inputs and physical posture flexibility decreasing. Meanwhile, display output settings, such as text font resizing and colourblind alterations, are almost completely absent. Our findings highlight the evolution in the implementation of accessible features in virtual reality software, contributing to a representative overview of practitioner decisions, and acting as a catalyst towards the establishment of industry-wide guidelines.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Identification Number:	10.1145/3706598.3713558
Dates:	Date Event 24 January 2025 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	VR, Accessibility, Software review, Input, Output, Locomotion
Subjects:	CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-02 - information technology CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-03 - information systems CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-06 - computer games and animation
Divisions:	Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > College of Computing
Depositing User:	Arthur Theil
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2025 14:23
Last Modified:	24 Feb 2025 14:27
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16169

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