Tuesday, March 23, 2021, our Educators in VR weekly workshop in AltspaceVR features Thomas Logan of Equal Entry, a renowned leader in technology solutions for a diverse range of disabilities for access and use of VR.
Statistics vary wildly, but it is estimated that 15-20% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. There are multiple ways to consider this fact. First, have you considered how people with disabilities could use the experience you are building in Virtual Reality? Second, that’s a very large number of consumers with purchasing power being ignored by too many virtual reality experiences.
Thomas Logan will explore how to make our virtual worlds, events, and apps accessible, reaching this diverse and eager-to-engage audience. An example will be for this special presentation. We will be featuring the new AltspaceVR live speech captioning and translation feature, a great opportunity to see this powerful and first-ever captioning and translation feature on a VR platform.
Thomas Logan is an expert in accessibility, especially for XR, WCAG, and ADA. He spent the past twenty years assisting organizations to create technology solutions that work for people with disabilities. Over his career, Thomas has delivered projects for numerous federal, state and local government agencies as well as private sector organizations from startups to Fortune 500s.
He is the owner of Equal Entry, whose mission is: “contributing to a more accessible world.” He is also organizer of Accessibility Virtual Reality and co-organizer of Accessibility New York with monthly Meetups for people interested in topics related to accessibility and people with disabilities. Thomas lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Last year, Thomas presented at our Educators in VR 2020 International Summit on Inclusive Presentations in VR for People with Disabilities, and rocked our virtual worlds and events.
Check out his articles and posts on VR and accessibility on his site, and here are some other videos to watch to prepare for this special workshop.
Virtual Realities and Accessibility: What’s Possible?
Accessibility and Virtual Reality
If you wish to learn more, consider visiting Netflix to watch one of this year’s award-winning films, “Crip Camp,” a documentary on the disability rights movement with a group at campers who bonded at Camp Jened in New York, a summer camp for teens with disabilities. Their friendship brought them together to push forward and enforce a variety of laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act that led the world is recognizing the rights of the disabled and accessibility for all that requires all web-based sites and experiences, in addition to buildings, streets, and other physical, institutional, and attitudinal barriers to provide equal access.