Christian Vogler leads the Technical Access Program at Gallaudet University, and has been looking into captions for VR and 3D spatial environments for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing. I had a chance to catch up with him at the XR Access Symposium where he was providing warnings about translating of 2D accessibility paradigms into the new realities and potentials of 3D volumes and spatial computing. He was talking about some of the concerns for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing including the challenges of splitting visual attention, the challenges of information overload, and the potential to communicate new channels of information through the modality of haptics. (Also don't miss my deep dive into captioning for VR discussion with W3C's Michael Cooper in episode #1230 where I do an audit of different captioning experiments across the VR landscape in the write-up.)

Vogler also talked about how all of the existing virtual reality headsets interfere with his cochlear implants that means that he often has to either take off his cochlear implants and not be able to hear any sound or deal with the uncomfortable strain that VR headsets have for folks with cochlear implants.

A rough transcript of our conversation is down below (as well as rough transcripts for the all 1200+ episodes of the Voices of VR podcast), and I was also able to record a video with the sign language of both my questions and Vogler's answers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wavOOCRRQC0

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

Music: Fatality