Sean Dougherty and Jeffrey Colon are Access Technology Experts who work for the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired non-profit, and they were very active at the XR Access Symposium during a number of sessions focusing on the NSF-grant funded SocialSense XR: Making the Invisible Visible program, doing a review of Vision Accessibility with AR+AI Tools, and facilitating a group discussion about Exploring Accessible VR for Blind Users.



This was the final interview from my trip to XR Access Symposium, and a fitting end to my 15-part series on XR Accessibility because we explore both the many challenges of making XR accessible for blind and low-vision users, but also some of the many exciting possibilities for how XR can be used as assistive technologies to help solve real problems. Mobile-phone based AR apps that integrate AI and computer vision features are already seeing a lot of early adoption within their communities, and there's lots of work that's happening on the VR and virtual meeting front (including Zoom) that has the potential to feed into more AR assistive technology features in the future that help make the physical world more accessible.



There's still lots of work yet to be done with XR Accessibility, but hopefully this 15-part and 8-hour series has helped to map out out the landscape and contextualize the work that has already been done and also what is yet to be done in the future. Again, here is all 15-episodes of this Voices of VR podcast series on XR Accessibility:




Shiri Azenkot on founding XR Access



Christine Hemphill on defining disability through difference



Reginé Gilbert on her book about Accessibility & XR Heuristics



Christian Vogler on captions in VR & potential of haptics



Six interviews from the XR Access Symposium poster session



Dylan Fox on the journey towards XR Accessibility



Liz Hyman on the public policy POV on XR Accessibility



Mark Steelman on accessible XR for career exploration



W3C's Michael Cooper on customizable captions in XR



Joel Ward on challenges with government contracting for accessibility and live captioning with XREAL glasses



Jazmin Cano & Peter Galbraith on Owlchemy Labs' pioneering low-vision features for Cosmonious High



Liv Erickson on intersection between AI & Spatial Computing for Accessibility



Ohan Oda on upcoming accessibility AR features in Google Maps



Yvonne Felix on using AR HMDs as an assistive technology for blind and low-vision users



Sean Dougherty & Jeffrey Colon on the challenges and opportunities in making XR accessible for blind & low-vision users
















This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.



Music: Fatality