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The Looking-Glass Avatar: Representing Chronic Pain through Social Virtual Reality Avatar Movement

Published: 27 October 2024 Publication History

Abstract

With recent movements toward disability as a social identity, we explore whether pain associated with chronic pain conditions (e.g., arthritis, Crohn’s disease, lupus) is also linked to identity and representation preferences. Prior work showed social VR users with invisible disabilities noted preliminary interest in using their avatar’s body language to represent their disability-related identities. We examined movement-based social virtual reality (VR) avatar representation preferences by conducting semi-structured interviews with five participants with such chronic pain conditions. Participants incorporated social norms, cultural considerations, and internalized self-stigma into their decision-making about pain disclosure and representation in different contexts. Aligning with previous work on self-presence and embodiment, in order to avoid discomfort, most participants wanted to avoid experiences where their avatar moved in ways that they did not, or could not, move in the physical world (i.e., jumping, bending over from the spine). Two participants also wanted to be able to represent their personal use of clothing and fashion as accommodation in the physical world. We believe this study will further our understanding of how disability-related identities should be represented in social VR spaces.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
    October 2024
    1475 pages
    ISBN:9798400706776
    DOI:10.1145/3663548
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 27 October 2024

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    Author Tags

    1. accessibility
    2. avatar movement
    3. avatars
    4. chronic pain
    5. customization
    6. disability disclosure
    7. invisible disabilities
    8. social virtual reality
    9. virtual reality

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