This is really interesting. A lot of these VR games seem to be working to approximate the head height of the user, instead of forcing them into the head height of their avatar. I wonder if that makes a difference from a user standpoint - does giving users a more familiar POV help with things like motion sickness in these games?
posted by thecjm at 1:03 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hey that's our narrative designer! So glad to see this article out today & grateful that he thoughtfully put this together for a larger audience. [Disclaimer: I founded the company that the article's author works at]

I love that the conversation on accessibility in VR is getting shared outside of the usual circles. A lot of the difficulty from the design perspective revolves around just plain not having access to the people who need to be included in the interaction design process. There are so many voices and so many unique experiences out there that need to be heard and designed for in virtual/augmented reality.

Most of the universal design solutions people are coming up with are still behind closed doors. If you're curious what other experimental stuff is out there, here are some dynamic subtitles that follow you around for deaf/hard of hearing users from a guy in Melbourne. There's also the VR accessibility podcast with Katie Goode that the author linked to in the article is worth a listen, accommodating limited mobility in room-scale experiences.
posted by Snacks at 1:35 PM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

A lot of these VR games seem to be working to approximate the head height of the user, instead of forcing them into the head height of their avatar.

I don't think it would be that more difficult to scale the entire environment to the user based on height. You build the world based on a 6ft tall avatar so if you have a 3ft tall user, everything is half size. That wouldn't work in every case (people in wheel chairs, for example) but it makes sense to scale the world to the user rather than try to scale just the avatar to them depending on the experience you're trying to give.
posted by VTX at 2:03 PM on July 11, 2016

My friend described his son wanting to reach something on a high shelf in VR, so he picked his son up in actual reality and lifted him up so he could get it.
posted by user92371 at 2:38 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Unless you're overlaying the VR on the real world, why limit VR height to your (or your avatar's) actual height? I like the idea that in VR, I could have elastic arms and legs and run faster than a locomotive. Oh OK, I'll go read TFA now.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:29 PM on July 11, 2016

dynamic subtitles that follow you around for deaf/hard of hearing users

Among other things, I'm interested to see what solutions emerge for different severities of visual impairment. Haptic coveralls for everyone!
posted by Kabanos at 8:01 AM on July 12, 2016

I would love to try something that's similar to how some people use echolocation in order to navigate physical spaces, for people who have a hard time seeing but are otherwise perfectly capable at hearing a wide range of frequencies and volumes. :)

Another link for those curious: a flexible approach to making sure your VR experience is appropriate for both room-scale and seated experiences.
posted by Snacks at 4:34 PM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is really cool and I'd never thought about it before. Thanks for posting it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:59 AM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]