Dylan Fox is the Director of Operations for the XR Access Initiative, where he focuses on outreach and advocacy for making virtual and augmented reality accessible for people who have disabilities. I previously interviewed Fox for the white paper on Accessibility that he co-wrote for the IEEE Global Initiative on the Ethics of Extended Reality.

I had a chance to catch up with Fox at the XR Access Symposium to get an overview of the event, the latest excitement about the accessibility features on the Apple Vision Pro, the XR Accessibility resources page from XR Association and XR Access, the Virtual Experience Research Accelerator, the potential of using AI for assistive technologies like phone-based computer vision projects like Be My Eyes, and the perils of over relying upon AI to fix all accessibility problems, and the potential of beyond computing within rectangles into data that's physical and within our environment and engaging with objects in our spaces, and computing into naturalistic interfaces. There's still a lot of work yet to be done to make XR completely accessible, and the XR Access Initiative is on the bleeding edge of doing the preliminary research, participating in interdisciplinary projects, forging relationships with industry partners, and bringing the community together to talk about these issues.

XR Access Initiative collaborated with the XR Association on Chapter 3 of XRA's XR Developer's Guide Series that was released on October 27, 2020 that focused on Accessibility & Inclusive Design in Immersive Experiences. The following table is a quick reference guide that cross-references the Accessibility Techniques with the spectrum of disabilities including sight disabilities, auditory disabilities, non-speaking / speech impairments, mobility disabilities, and cognitive disabilities. You can get the full Accessibility Developer's Guide report here (email required).

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

Music: Fatality