Initial Evaluation of Accessibility and Design Awareness with 3-D Immersive Environments

This paper describes an effort to build and evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive 3-D visualization system to help increase the awareness that students have when designing software that has a high level of accessibility for the differently abled. The demonstration utilizes an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment in which we simulated two types of colorblindness in a generally familiar environment. We report on the initial trial of this tool and the results of student surveys designed to assess impact on student perception and understanding and demonstrate that the use of virtual environments can give students greater empathy for individuals with visual impairments

Initial Evaluation of Accessibility and Design Awareness with 3-D Immersive Environments

This paper describes an effort to build and evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive 3-D visualization system to help increase the awareness that students have when designing software that has a high level of accessibility for the differently abled. The demonstration utilizes an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment in which we simulated two types of colorblindness in a generally familiar environment. We report on the initial trial of this tool and the results of student surveys designed to assess impact on student perception and understanding and demonstrate that the use of virtual environments can give students greater empathy for individuals with visual impairments