Towards a More Inclusive Metaverse via Designing Tools That Support Collaborative Virtual World Building by Users With and Without Disabilities

TL;DR

This paper discusses designing collaborative virtual world building tools in social VR to enhance inclusivity for users with and without disabilities, emphasizing future research directions.

Contribution

It highlights key factors and proposes future research directions for creating inclusive virtual world building tools supporting diverse users.

Findings

Social VR benefits for users with disabilities

Importance of inclusive design in virtual world tools

Future research needed for collaborative inclusivity

Abstract

Research has found social VR to bring various benefits to users with and without disabilities. Given the success of social VR applications that support user-created worlds, it is important to consider how we can empower users in building inclusive virtual worlds by investigating how tools for world building can be built to better support collaborations between users with and without disabilities. As such, this position paper provides a brief discussion of existing research into important factors that should be considered during such collaborations, and possible future research directions.