Human guides for blind and low vision people in VR

What is it about?

Human guides are often used by blind and low vision people in the physical world to help with tasks such as navigation or interpreting visual displays like signs or pictures. We have shown the potential for bringing a human guide into VR to support blind and low vision people in the virtual world. This is a previously unexplored way of making VR accessible for blind and low vision users. We create a prototype to give blind and low vision participants a human guide in VR and ask them to talk about their experiences using the guide for various tasks in VR.

Featured Image

Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash

Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We explore how to bring a very common and powerful accessibility technique from the physical world into the virtual world for blind and low vision people. We find that a human guide in VR can readily handle a large variety of challenges blind and low vision people face in VR. In addition, a guide can be brought into the VR experience through basic, commercial VR equipment, so blind and low vision users do not need access to expensive or confusing equipment to use the guide. Finally, we also point out the many opportunities for improving guides in VR that are not possible in the physical world, such as changing their shape, giving them abilities like flight, or turning them invisible.