VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Awareness of Avatars for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual Reality

TL;DR

VRBubble is an innovative audio-based system that improves peripheral awareness of avatars for visually impaired users in social VR, enhancing accessibility and social interaction through spatial audio cues.

Contribution

This paper introduces VRBubble, a novel audio feedback technique based on proxemic theory, specifically designed to improve social VR accessibility for PVI by enhancing avatar awareness.

Findings

VRBubble significantly improved avatar awareness during navigation.

VRBubble enabled avatar identification in social contexts.

VRBubble was more distracting in crowded environments.

Abstract

Social Virtual Reality (VR) is growing for remote socialization and collaboration. However, current social VR applications are not accessible to people with visual impairments (PVI) due to their focus on visual experiences. We aim to facilitate social VR accessibility by enhancing PVI's peripheral awareness of surrounding avatar dynamics. We designed VRBubble, an audio-based VR technique that provides surrounding avatar information based on social distances. Based on Hall's proxemic theory, VRBubble divides the social space with three Bubbles -- Intimate, Conversation, and Social Bubble -- generating spatial audio feedback to distinguish avatars in different bubbles and provide suitable avatar information. We provide three audio alternatives: earcons, verbal notifications, and real-world sound effects. PVI can select and combine their preferred feedback alternatives for different avatars, bubbles, and social contexts. We evaluated VRBubble and an audio beacon baseline with 12 PVI in a navigation and a conversation context. We found that VRBubble significantly enhanced participants' avatar awareness during navigation and enabled avatar identification in both contexts. However, VRBubble was shown to be more distracting in crowded environments.