Just over a year ago I wrote an article Second Life Class Action about the inaccessibility of Second Life and followed that in January by the suggestion of a beginning of a solution in Second Life open source accessible client.
My Class Action article was a little tongue in cheek as Second Life, at that time, was really only a pastime/game/entertainment and although people with disabilities should have the right to take part and not be excluded it was not critical.
I recently realised that things have moved on a long way in a year and we are beginning to see Second Life being used for business and professional reasons. The one that specifically caught me eye was a recruitment fair run by TMP in the UK with blue chip companies including KPMG, RBS and Yell looking for recruits. A virtual fair has a lot of benefits for all involved as travel is eliminated and timings can be more flexible. Both of these benefits are particularly important to people with disabilities who can find travel to a new place particularly difficult.
There have been many others. For example Sun decided to make a major announcement in SL rather than a big New York hotel, getting many more attendees and making a considerable saving in cost.
Universities in the US and the UK are investigating, and have experimented with, using virtual worlds as an education channel.
General social awareness means that if these types of events are in real life they will be accessible and the law will uphold that right. Accessibility of websites is moving in that direction as can be seen by the ongoing Target Law suit I discussed in Three cheers for Target for fighting accessibility.
The logic of natural justice (and therefore the law at some future date) will mean that events, meetings etc. held in SL will need to be accessible. A blue chip company will never want to be pulled through the courts or exposed in the media for excluding anyone with a disability from a real life meeting. They will feel the same way about SL meetings. In time, this will mean that these companies will think twice about having meetings in SL if they cannot be accessible.
When I wrote my original article Linden Labs (the creators of SL) explained that it was a start up company with limited resources. A year later it is a fast growing company and the argument for not doing anything is much weaker.
There are a number of projects looking at possible solutions.
IBM ran an Extreme Blue Projects to look at accessibility of virtual worlds for blind people. The project included the ability to list objects in your vicinity, directional sound to help navigation and text to speech for communicating with other avatars.
Keio University has created a brain computer interface (BCI) for SL. It monitors brain waves in the motor cortex and converts them into movements of the avatar.
These are interesting and important research project showing what could be possible. In the short term I feel that there should be more work done to create a robust and simple interface for people with disabilities. I would suggest this should start with an interface that can be used without a mouse.
An estimate has been made that, within four years, 80% of active Internet users will be using virtual worlds of one sort or another, I have no reason to doubt that estimate. It shows that, although my article a year ago was light hearted, this one should be considered serious and within a year the story will be critical. The problem now needs to be fixed.
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11th December 2007: 'Dave Elchoness' said:
I recently started a consultancy, VRWorkplace, to advise enterprises on how to use virtual worlds, such as Second Life, to improve collaboration, cohesion, and socialization within geographically dispersed workplaces, organizations, etc. Already today, companies use Second Life for meetings, office space, collaboration, training and recruiting. Individuals are employed to perform real life jobs inside of Second Life. So, yes, I do agree that Second Life should be accessible to all. Notably, there is a large disabled community in Second Life, able through its 3D interface to experience things that real life cannot offer. Additionally, recruiting in Second Life allows applicants to keep any disabilities hidden from recruiters. There's more to this subject than what appears on the surface.
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