Inclusive Design for Immersive Web standards W3C Workshop position paper: Understanding XR Accessibility User Needs & Requirements

Inclusive Design for Immersive Web standards W3C Workshop position paper: Understanding XR Accessibility User Needs & Requirements (Oct 2019)

Author: Joshue O Connor Emerging Web Technology Specialist (WAI/W3C)

Overview & Background in inclusive XR and/or relevant Web technologies

I am Emerging Web Technology Specialist for WAI/W3C. I'm currently working on identifying gaps in existing Web standards that relate to emerging technology. I am a long serving accessibility professional, ex HTML5 working group member, HTML5 ARIA Task Force facilitator and ex co-chair of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG) where I helped lead the successful development of WCAG 2.1.

As a member of the Accessible Platform Architectures working group and Research Questions Task Force I am working on defining user needs and requirements for people with disabilities in XR (Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality) environments. We call this document 'XAUR' and it is a modular framework that aims to address Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments via the lens of both functional and technical requirements.[1]

This work is supported by the EC-funded WAI-Guide Project .

Topic discussion

I am interested in sharing this draft with the workshop attendees and getting feedback. I also hope to contribute to the discussion on identifying any current gaps in how WebXR/XR content is rendered. Identifying issues will help with defining a suitable architecture for XR that will support the broadest possible range of accessibility requirements.

Our user requirements document is based on input from a range of stakeholders with disabilities who possess deep technical understanding of user requirements for other disability types.

I hope discussion of this and other related topics will be helpful to workshop attendees.

Links to related supporting resources;

Other topics you think the workshop should cover?