Ironhide wrote:I mainly dislike VR as just like the Wii, its further increasing the physical demands of gaming upon the player - as a disabled gamer it saddens me to think that in the future when everyone is playing fully immersive VR in a Ready Player 1 style virtual world, people like myself will be left behind and excluded.
Whilst I don't think it will happen in the short-term, once VR becomes established I absolutely do believe there will be fantastic opportunities to make VR work for people with different disabilities -although I do understand that that there might not be a solution for everybody.
The headset can provide the immersion in a 3D world. A reduced set of movement & interaction commands could be used with an adapted controller for those who have minimal use of a hand or foot, or mouth or tongue control.
Voice control could also be used to input commands.
And for people who have no movement they may still be able to wear the VR headset and have a friend navigate a 3D environment so they can 'visit' virtual worlds.
For a person who has little control of head movement, in the distant future, there may even be able to add eye-tracking in the VR headset.
The accessibility features that Apple add to their phone demonstrate that technology is being used to help people with disabilities have more independence, and specifically the new Xbox adaptive controller which is for entertainment lead me to think that with time, once VR becomes established, companies will look to expand the reach of their VR products to as many people as possible.