An AI Guide to Enhance Accessibility of Social Virtual Reality for Blind People
arXiv:2410.14058 · doi:10.1145/3663548.3688498
Abstract
The rapid growth of virtual reality (VR) has led to increased use of social VR platforms for interaction. However, these platforms lack adequate features to support blind and low vision (BLV) users, posing significant challenges in navigation, visual interpretation, and social interaction. One promising approach to these challenges is employing human guides in VR. However, this approach faces limitations with a lack of availability of humans to serve as guides, or the inability to customize the guidance a user receives from the human guide. We introduce an AI-powered guide to address these limitations. The AI guide features six personas, each offering unique behaviors and appearances to meet diverse user needs, along with visual interpretation and navigation assistance. We aim to use this AI guide in the future to help us understand BLV users' preferences for guide forms and functionalities.
References in corpus (3)
- "It's Just Part of Me:" Understanding Avatar Diversity and Self-presentation of People with Disabilities in Social Virtual Reality
- VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Awareness of Avatars for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual Reality
- "The Guide Has Your Back": Exploring How Sighted Guides Can Enhance Accessibility in Social Virtual Reality for Blind and Low Vision People