[MUSIC]
>> Where do you see VR, MR,
AR impacting digital access for people with disabilities?
What do you feel is the biggest barrier to
making these technologies more accessible?
>> I love this question.
Thank you so much for asking.
There's actually so many barriers.
But there's also so many great applications
in terms of accessibility.
For example, one of the tools
is augmented reality glasses HoloLens by Microsoft,
which means that you can put it on
and then we can detect everything in your environment,
where the wall is, where you have something in front of you.
If you are visually impaired,
this is a very helpful information.
One of the researchers that are working on
an application similar to that was trying
to solve a problem which most able people don't.
I mean, think about how to find bus stops.
Every city has a different bus stop label.
Sometimes they're behind, it's free,
and you have to be able to have
someone find the bus stop and walk towards it if they don't see.
There are great applications like that because
augmented reality is self environment aware.
It's available on your mobile devices too, which is great.
But the problem that we are running into,
so I am also a co-chair at WebXR Immersive Web working group.
We've been discussing about this and this
is the thing that we are getting stuck most of the time.
Is that WebXR device API doesn't give
you anything to render anything.
Basically, we are saying you
have access to the sensors and you can do these kind of things,
but it's up to the developer to create these accessibility tools.
We are not able to define that as the working group,
which makes me very sad.
Because that means that there's one more step to do
and we should have a tool to make it very easy for everybody.
One thing that is going to help is that in
your WebXR immersive experiences are happening on a Canvas,
which acts very differently than
any other HTML elements, also SVG.
One thing that we can do is to be able to add
some HTML elements from [inaudible] HTML elements,
for example, a div or anything else as
a fat layer on top of what you are using.
That would, I think,
be really helpful because then,
we can put tags and things like that so it will
be a little bit easier for accessibility.
The other challenge is that we have to
take into consideration of all
of the environments that you are in.
Well, if you are varying VR headsets,
we are assuming that this is
your height and maybe you are standing up.
But if you don't have a way of moving or you are not spending out,
we have to make sure that
the whole thing is adjusted according to you.
Currently, they're all up to the developers unfortunately.
But we do have few ways, like,
we can transport with some clicks instead of going to places.
But a lot falls into the developer to
create more inclusive applications.
>> Okay. At least for right now,
it very much then falls on to the developer,
but it sounds like there's at least some level
of progress that's being made.
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> Yes. Hopefully. One of
the other thing is that
while trying to make things more accessible,
we also don't want to give so much information about the user.
For example, hand interaction is a thing in augmented reality.
But we don't want to tell your application that I have
three fingers or five fingers because that's
personal information and you don't want to give that away.
How do you adjust all of
the applications according to that is the challenge.