Virtually There: An Exploration of Immersive Experiences for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Sivesgaard, Johannes

4. semester

Oplevelsesdesign (cand.it.), Kandidat

2023

2023-06-01

180 pages

This project is an exploration of how people with visual impairments can experience immersion, presence and flow through the use of virtual reality technology. For this purpose, we conducted an initial investigation into how the visually impaired experience the world in order to identify possible factors that could help us design an immersive virtual experience for this target group. After the initial research, we came into contact with a blind gamer, with whom we tested existing VR applications and games in order to find out whether these were able to incite immersion in the subject. Here we found that VR technology has potential for creating immersive experiences for the blind, but that it was impractical for independent use, and that the current selection of experiences on various VR platforms are inaccessible to the blind. With the insights we gained from this test, we initiated an idea generation which resulted in a game concept for VR, specifically targeted at blind players. To test the feasibility of the design, we developed a functional prototype, which we tested on the same blind gamer from the previous test. Here we found that VR has immense potentiale for the creation of experiences that incite both presence and flow, but that there are still design challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve a level of presence comparable to the one seeing people get from visual VR experiences.

This project is an exploration of how people with visual impairments can experience immersion, presence and flow through the use of virtual reality technology. For this purpose, we conducted an initial investigation into how the visually impaired experience the world in order to identify possible factors that could help us design an immersive virtual experience for this target group. After the initial research, we came into contact with a blind gamer, with whom we tested existing VR applications and games in order to find out whether these were able to incite immersion in the subject. Here we found that VR technology has potential for creating immersive experiences for the blind, but that it was impractical for independent use, and that the current selection of experiences on various VR platforms are inaccessible to the blind. With the insights we gained from this test, we initiated an idea generation which resulted in a game concept for VR, specifically targeted at blind players. To test the feasibility of the design, we developed a functional prototype, which we tested on the same blind gamer from the previous test. Here we found that VR has immense potentiale for the creation of experiences that incite both presence and flow, but that there are still design challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve a level of presence comparable to the one seeing people get from visual VR experiences.

Virtual Reality ; Extended Reality ; Blinde ; Svagsynede ; Tilgængelighed ; Inklusion ; Oplevelsesdesign ; Spil ; Spildesign

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