XR History

XR Accessibility History and Lessons Learned

There is new work underway in W3C that aims to develop and standardise a suitable accessibility architecture for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. This work is leveraging massive advances in computer and graphic power and processing, as well as browser and Assistive Technology advances.

This document attempts to collect overviews of various historic projects as they relate to making Virtual Reality, or abstractions of applications into accessible models that support multi modal requirements. We will aim to demonstrate the user needs that these legacy projects aimed to address as well as distil the lessons learned from these attempts in order to maximise the effectiveness of current work.

These examples are diverse and include:

• Making audio alternatives to represent aircraft flight patterns and positioning in real time.
• GPS positioning for blind users.
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