poster

Demonstration of VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Avatar Awareness for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual Reality

Authors:

Brianna R Cochran,

Yuhang ZhaoAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts

Article No.: 401, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519657

Published: 28 April 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Social Virtual Reality (VR) use is growing for socializing and collaboration. However, current applications are not accessible to people with visual impairments (PVI) due to their focus on visual experiences. We aim to design VR technologies to enhance social VR accessibility for PVI. We focus on facilitating peripheral awareness, a vital ability in social activities. With an iterative design process involving five participants, we designed VRBubble, a VR technique to facilitate peripheral awareness for PVI via spatial audio. Based on Hall’s proxemic theory, VRBubble divides the social space with three Bubbles—Intimate, Personal, and Social Bubble—generating spatial audio feedback to distinguish avatars in different bubbles and provide suitable avatar information. We provide three audio alternatives: earcons, verbal notifications, and sound effects. PVI can select and combine their preferred feedback alternatives for different social context to maintain avatar awareness in a dynamic social VR environment.

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Cited By

Gupta CSridhar SMatthies DJouffrais CNanayakkara S(2024)SonicVista: Towards Creating Awareness of Distant Scenes through SonificationProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36596098:2(1-32)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3659609
Ji TCochran BZhao Y(2022)VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Awareness of Avatars for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual RealityProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3544821(1-17)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517428.3544821

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI EA '22: Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2022

3066 pages

ISBN:9781450391566

DOI:10.1145/3491101

Editors:
Simone Barbosa
PUC-Rio, Brazil
,
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan, USA
,
Caroline Appert
Université Paris-Saclay, France
,
David A. Shamma
Toyota Research Institute, USA

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Published: 28 April 2022

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CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 29 - May 5, 2022

LA, New Orleans, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

Gupta CSridhar SMatthies DJouffrais CNanayakkara S(2024)SonicVista: Towards Creating Awareness of Distant Scenes through SonificationProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36596098:2(1-32)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3659609
Ji TCochran BZhao Y(2022)VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Awareness of Avatars for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual RealityProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3544821(1-17)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517428.3544821

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