Latest revision as of 10:17, 6 May 2019

Accessibility for the Blind in Second Life

Linden Labs has established an Architecture Working Groupto help steer development over the next two years. The AWG has Viewpoint Advocacy subgroups which focus on particular issues. This page is the draft document of a Viewpoint Advocacy for enabling blind users in Second Life.

Stakeholders

I am assembling a list of stakeholders, please feel free to join.

Bill Carter - IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
Eelke Folmer - University of Nevada, Reno
Gareth White - University of Sussex, UK
Terry Hodgson - NASA Learning Technologies, Johnson Space Center

You've Got to be Kidding!

This is generally the thought that crosses a person's mind when the idea of blind users participating in virtual worlds is first encountered. The very notion seems preposterous. Virtual worlds are intensely visual by nature, how can it ever be possible for a blind person to operate in them? As one continues to think about the problem, however, endless possibilities begin to present themselves. In many ways it is not so different from ordinary GUI and web applications, and please be assured that we have a good understanding about how to enable blind users to interact with them very effectively. The basic trick involves the use of an assistive technology called a screen reader which can transform text into synthetic speech. Applications which are suitably enabled can give the screen reader access to textual information about all their GUI widgets, and GUI apps which are appropriately designed allow blind users to navigate them by means of the keyboard alone. Extending this technique to virtual worlds applications is very challenging of course, but it is entirely doable if the right infrastructure is put into place.

Why Bother?

Chances are the reader of this document can see pretty well. Most people have reasonably good vision, less than 1% of the population is blind. Why should we care if those few folks have access to modern computer applications? The first reason is that it is the decent and considerate thing to do. Everyone should be able to participate in our civilization regardless of their disabilities. If its necessary to see this in a selfish light, remember that you may fall victim to an accident or a disease someday which robs you of your eyesight. Surely you will want to be able to continue as before in as many ways as possible. There are several other reasons for making virtual worlds accessible to the blind and we list them here:

Virtual worlds offer social communities agnostic of race, age, disabilities or gender. The Heron Sanctuary is a meeting place in Second Life for people with disabilities which currently has 125 members which suffer from disabilities such as multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. Naughty Auties is a virtual resource center and meeting place within Second Life for those with autism. The blind are excluded from participating in such communities even though it could benefit them the most. The severity of their disability may make the blind feel socially and physically isolated within their geographic communities and the interaction options offered by virtual worlds significantly exceed the interaction options offered by web based social tools like chatboxes.
Legal Similar to the legal requirement that buildings be constructed in a manner which is wheelchair-friendly, the government and many educational organizations have standards in place which require that computer applications be accessible to people with disabilities. An example; many universities have adopted secondlife as a virtual classroom, therefore it needs to comply with section 508 of the US rehabilitation act -which states that Federal agencies, such as universities relying on federal funding, make their electronic and information technology accessible.
Business: There are an estimated 1.3 million legally blind people in the US and up to 45 million blind people worldwide. Virtual worlds like Second Life are a global success with 10 million users from around the world. Excluding the Blind from participation in virtual worlds may be bad for your business.

Virtual worlds have the potential to shape the future of the web. Applications like Second Life and Google earth offer much richer forms of interaction. After the significant investments made in making the world wide web accessible we cannot exclude blind from participating in these technologies.

What Can Be Done?

Research

The main question that we need to solve is: How can we make Second life accessible to the Blind? Several blind accessible games have been developed over the past years (Shades of Doom, Audio Quake and Terraformers) that may be used as examples of how to make virtual worlds accessible as their interaction models are similar. But virtual worlds are different from these first person shooters as virtual worlds focus on interacting with objects and avatars and also allow for content creation. How can blind also participate in these activities? Several different approaches are currently being explored.

Identifying Technical Barriers

As blind users have to revert to using a screen reader we need to be able to extract a textual description from Second life. The first and foremost problem that has identified is the lack of descriptors or meta data for objects in Second Life. Similar to how web images lacking alt tags remain invisible to a blind user so are objects without name descriptions. The problem is actually worse, as the meaning of a web image can sometimes be derived from the text around the image or even from the filename. Objects in virtual worlds do not have this textual context nor a file name. Specifying a name and description for your object is optional, because people figure that you can see what they are. As a result many objects don't have a name, are simply called object, or have non descriptive names @#SDFCC_DD or have names filled with advertisements for the object creator.

Proposing Technical solutions

This viewpoint advocacy group might be able to suggest some technical solutions that could be beneficial to making Second Life accessible to the blind such as changing the way objects are created by making it mandatory for objects to have an accurate name field and an descriptor. We could propose a mechanism that enforces the user to add "meaningful" metadata to an object before it is created, or at least that there be a way to embed it in the object. We could also allow other people to name objects and provide descriptions rather than the owner of the object. What if I want to be able to allow a blind user to know what we call the particular spot his avatar is standing on, to give him a useful description of his surroundings, etc. Second Life has the concept of a region which has a name, and that's nice, but clearly there needs to be a way to add much more descriptive information about discrete spaces which would be made available to a screen reader. We could allow users to create location descriptions that are stored at particular locations in Second Life and be accessed on demand.

These solutions however may be hard to retroactively enforce upon the owners of the massive amount of content that have already been created and may also be prone to spam but for accessibility should at least be proposed and considered.

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 == You've Got to be Kidding! ==
-This is generally the thought that crosses a person's mind when the idea of blind users participating in virtual worlds is first encountered. The very notion seems preposterous. Virtual worlds are intensely visual by nature, how can it ever be possible for a blind person to operate in them? As one continues to think about the problem, however, endless possibilities begin to present themselves. In many ways it is not so different from ordinary GUI and web applications, and please be assured that we have a good understanding about how to enable blind users to interact with them very effectively. The basic trick involves the use of an assistive technology called a [http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws.asp screen reader]. Applications which are [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178443(VS.80).aspx suitably enabled] can give the screen reader access to textual information about all their GUI widgets, and GUI apps which are appropriately designed allow blind users to navigate them by means of the keyboard alone. Extending this technique to virtual worlds applications is very challenging of course, but it is entirely doable if the right infrastructure is put into place.
+This is generally the thought that crosses a person's mind when the idea of blind users participating in virtual worlds is first encountered. The very notion seems preposterous. Virtual worlds are intensely visual by nature, how can it ever be possible for a blind person to operate in them? As one continues to think about the problem, however, endless possibilities begin to present themselves. In many ways it is not so different from ordinary GUI and web applications, and please be assured that we have a good understanding about how to enable blind users to interact with them very effectively. The basic trick involves the use of an assistive technology called a [http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws.asp screen reader] which can transform text into synthetic speech. Applications which are [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178443(VS.80).aspx suitably enabled] can give the screen reader access to textual information about all their GUI widgets, and GUI apps which are appropriately designed allow blind users to navigate them by means of the keyboard alone. Extending this technique to virtual worlds applications is very challenging of course, but it is entirely doable if the right infrastructure is put into place.
 == Why Bother? ==
-Chances are the reader of this document can see pretty well. Most people have reasonably good vision, less than 1% of the population is blind. Why should we care if those few folks have access to modern computer applications? The first reason is that it is the decent and considerate thing to do. Everyone should be able to participate in our civilization regardless of their disabilities. If its necessary to see this in a selfish light, remember that you may fall victim to an accident or a disease someday which robs you of your eyesight. Surely you will want to be able to continue as before in as many ways as possible.
+Chances are the reader of this document can see pretty well. Most people have reasonably good vision, less than 1% of the population is blind. Why should we care if those few folks have access to modern computer applications? The first reason is that it is the decent and considerate thing to do. Everyone should be able to participate in our civilization regardless of their disabilities. If its necessary to see this in a selfish light, remember that you may fall victim to an accident or a disease someday which robs you of your eyesight. Surely you will want to be able to continue as before in as many ways as possible. There are several other reasons for making virtual worlds accessible to the blind and we list them here:
-But beyond the humane considerations there are business reasons for making applications accessible. Similar to the legal requirement that buildings be constructed in a manner which is wheelchair-friendly, the government and many educational organizations have [http://www.section508.gov/ standards in place] which require that computer applications be accessible to people with disabilities. An example; Many universities use secondlife as a virtual classroom, therefore it needs to comply with section 508 of the US rehabilitation act -which states that Federal agencies, such as universities relying on federal funding, make their electronic and information technology accessible.
-You can't sell your app to them unless blind people can use it. That can be a powerful motivator.
+# Virtual worlds offer '''social communities''' agnostic of race, age, disabilities or gender. The Heron Sanctuary is a meeting place in Second Life for people with disabilities which currently has 125 members which suffer from disabilities such as multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. [http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html Naughty Auties] is a virtual resource center and meeting place within Second Life for those with autism. The blind are excluded from participating in such communities even though it could benefit them the most. The severity of their disability may make the blind feel socially and physically isolated within their geographic communities and the interaction options offered by virtual worlds significantly exceed the interaction options offered by web based social tools like chatboxes.
+# '''Legal''' Similar to the legal requirement that buildings be constructed in a manner which is wheelchair-friendly, the government and many educational organizations have [http://www.section508.gov/ standards in place] which require that computer applications be accessible to people with disabilities. An example; many universities have adopted secondlife as a virtual classroom, therefore it needs to comply with section 508 of the US rehabilitation act -which states that Federal agencies, such as universities relying on federal funding, make their electronic and information technology accessible.
+# '''Business''':  There are an estimated 1.3 million legally blind people in the US and up to 45 million blind people worldwide. Virtual worlds like Second Life are a global success with 10 million users from around the world. Excluding the Blind from participation in virtual worlds may be bad for your business.
 Virtual worlds have the potential to shape the future of the web. Applications like Second Life and Google earth offer much richer forms of interaction. After the significant investments made in making the world wide web accessible we cannot exclude blind from participating in these technologies.
 == What Can Be Done? ==
-=== Keyboard Navigation ===
-To start with, the Second Life client needs to be enhanced such that blind users can navigate it without using a mouse. This means all the buttons, dropdown menus, dialogue boxes, and other standard GUI widgets need to be accessible via the keyboard only. This is done by means of allowing selection of widgets via alternative key combinations, hotkeys, accelerators, etc. One navigates through the widget hierarchy by using the tab and arrow keys. You can make selections by hitting the return key or the spacebar. Also the widgets all need to have accessible names, descriptions, and tooltips which are spoken out for the user by the screenreader. Much of the Second Life user interface is comprised of conventional GUI components and it doesn't require invention of any new technology in order to make them accessible. It will be '''much more challenging''' to make the virtual world content of Second Life accessible via keyboard navigation. Currently it is necessary to mouse-click on the various items you see in order to activate them in some way. These items may be ambulatory (in the sense that they can move around in virtual space rather than remaining fixed in place). There needs to be a discussion about how these are identified and made available to people who can't see them.
-=== Metadata ===
-Beyond the obvious fixing up of the user interface chrome in the SL viewer we need to have a way to put accessibility metadata into the Second Life content. As things currently stand the creator (and sometimes the owner) of a prim or a linked set can assign a name and a description to it. Obviously these need to be made available to a screenreader. Often however, names and descriptions are not initialized because people figure that you can see what they are. Should it be possible for non-owners to be able to contribute an accessible name and description for content in SL? Or have a mechanism that enforces the user to add "meaningful" metadata to an object before it is created.
-That would help with the created content, but what about the space? What if I want to be able to allow a blind user to know what we call the particular spot his avatar is standing on, to give him a useful description of his surroundings, etc. Second Life has the concept of a ''region'' which has a name, and that's nice, but clearly there needs to be a way to add much more descriptive information about discrete spaces which would be made available to a screenreader.
+=== Research ===
+The main question that we need to solve is: How can we make Second life accessible to the Blind? Several blind accessible games have been developed over the past years ([http://www.gmagames.com/sod.html Shades of Doom], [http://www.agrip.org.uk/ Audio Quake] and [http://www.terraformers.nu/ Terraformers]) that may be used as examples of how to make virtual worlds accessible as their interaction models are similar. But virtual worlds are different from these first person shooters as virtual worlds focus on interacting with objects and avatars and also allow for content creation. How can blind also participate in these activities? Several different approaches are currently being explored.
+=== Identifying Technical Barriers ===
+As blind users have to revert to using a screen reader we need to be able to extract a textual description from Second life. The first and foremost problem that has identified is the lack of descriptors or meta data for objects in Second Life. Similar to how web images lacking alt tags remain invisible to a blind user so are objects without name descriptions. The problem is actually worse, as the meaning of a web image can sometimes be derived from the text around the image or even from the filename. Objects in virtual worlds do not have this textual context nor a file name. Specifying a name and description for your object is optional, because people figure that you can see what they are. As a result many objects don't have a name, are simply called  ''object'', or have non descriptive names ''@#SDFCC_DD'' or have names filled with advertisements for the object creator.
+=== Proposing Technical  solutions ===
+This viewpoint advocacy group might be able to suggest some technical solutions that could be beneficial to making Second Life accessible to the blind such as changing the way objects are created by making it mandatory for objects to have an accurate name field and an descriptor. We could propose a mechanism that enforces the user to add "meaningful" metadata to an object before it is created, or at least that there be a way to embed it in the object. We could also allow other people to name objects and provide descriptions rather than the owner of the object. What if I want to be able to allow a blind user to know what we call the particular spot his avatar is standing on, to give him a useful description of his surroundings, etc. Second Life has the concept of a ''region'' which has a name, and that's nice, but clearly there needs to be a way to add much more descriptive information about discrete spaces which would be made available to a screen reader. We could allow users to create location descriptions that are stored at particular locations in Second Life and be accessed on demand.
-=== Taxonomy ===
+These solutions however may be hard to retroactively enforce upon the owners of the massive amount of content that have already been created and may also be prone to spam but for accessibility should at least be proposed and considered.
-For a blind player to know if an object is of interest we need to know its name. Retrieving the name of an object requires us to communicate with the server (you need to send a message to the server retrieving the contents of the object which includes the name.)  Blind players are unable to see objects nor click on them so we would need to query all the objects around the player and only list the ones of interest to the player. This is a problem as at any given moment the player may be surrounded by hundreds of objects. Querying for the names of hundreds of objects may burden the server and lead to a Denial of Service response from the server.
-Certain objects with very distinct geometrical properties like billboards or houses may be of interest to a blind user. Can we come up with a taxonomy of objects in SL and embed this information in the geometrical properties of an object so we can avoid burdening the server with requests for names? the geometrical properties (size/textures) are already send out to the user as they are used to render the SL world.

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