Despite the significant growth in virtual reality applications and research,
the notion of inclusion in virtual reality is not well studied. Inclusion
refers to the active involvement of different groups of people in the adoption,
use, design, and development of VR technology and applications. In this review,
we provide a scoping analysis of existing virtual reality research literature
about inclusion. We categorize the literature based on target group into
ability, gender, and age, followed by those that study community-based design
of VR experiences. In the latter group, we focus mainly on Indigenous Peoples
as a clearer and more important example. We also briefly review the approaches
to model and consider the role of users in technology adoption and design as a
background for inclusion studies. We identify a series of generic barriers and
research gaps and some specific ones for each group, resulting in suggested
directions for future research