Communication and Collaboration Among DHH People in a Co-located Collaborative Multiplayer AR Environment

One of the most recent developments in augmented reality (AR) technology is co-located collaborative multiplayer AR environments, yet little research has been done to determine how communication and collaboration function in these settings. There is a gap in our understanding of whether these environments are currently accessible for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) people. Although technical aspects, such as design, implementation, accuracy, etc., of the technologies and users’ behavior with assistive AR technologies, have been covered in plenty of prior literature, very few studies have paid attention to how DHH people communicate and collaborate in co-located collaborative AR environments. As an initial step toward addressing the gap in current literature, our ongoing research focuses on how DHH people communicate and collaborate in a co-located collaborative multiplayer AR environment. As part of our study, we conducted gameplay experiments and one-on-one semi-structured interviews with 17 DHH participants. In this piece of work, among the prominent themes that stood out in our findings, we further discuss communication and collaboration, specifically multi-modal communication (verbal and non-verbal) among users and how multi-modal communication affected their collaboration in the environment.