Inclusive Immersion

Inclusive Immersion

The project Inclusive Immersion will carry out pertinent user research and user performance modelling and subsequently develop a set of design guidelines and a design toolkit for inclusive design of immersive content and content application interfaces in Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) environments. The guidelines and the toolkit will facilitate the immersive experiences that are more accessible and usable for people with permanent and situational impairments and disabilities affecting vision, hearing, mobility, dexterity and cognition and for older people.

The user research will investigate both the barriers to the use of immersive technologies and the user requirements for inclusion. The research findings will feed into the user performance model underpinning the guidelines and the toolkit. The project will also analyse the process of immersive content design and production as currently practiced by industry-to define the best practice for the adoption of the inclusion solutions. The business opportunities for Inclusive Immersion and the design solutions will be scoped to understand the underlying business potential. The types of the immersive content to be included in the project are: i) Broadcast Content, ii) Education Content and iii) Gaming Content, the most widely used types. While the focus will be on interactions in the digital domain, the project will also consider the physical interfaces of the hardware required to access immersive environments, with the hardware analysis and the consequent inclusive design recommendations forming part of the guidelines.

The Inclusive Immersion Design Guidelines will provide a detailed specification of the inclusion issues and the inclusive design strategies and particular interventions to counter the issues. The Inclusive Immersion Design Toolkit will consist of three design tools: Design Tool 01: Simulation, Design Tool 02: Manual Adaptation and Design Tool 03: Automated Adaptation. The three tools will be developed as plug-ins for Unity, the most widely used platform for the creation of immersive content, popular both in industry and academia.

Immersive technologies-VR, AR and MR-are set to change the way we experience our lives and the world around us. Owing to the ongoing advances in the processing power, the technologies are expected to develop rapidly over the next years and become widely applied and adopted in broadcast and entertainment media, education and gaming, but also in health and wellbeing, shopping, travel, general business and other areas. By 2021, the immersive business is expected to grow to the value of £801 million annually within just the UK media and entertainment industry-which makes immersive technologies a key proponent in the overall growth of the Digital Economy.

The expansion of the immersive market brings into the spotlight the need to start working towards ensuring that the immersive content and interfaces are designed inclusively. At present in the UK, there are more than 11 million people registered as disabled, across the age range and the motor, perceptual and cognitive disability categories, and there are an increasing number of people aged 65 years and over, currently more than 11.5 million, most of whom live permanently with a degree of impairment. Making immersive environments accessible to all these people is not just the question of supporting a more equal society, but-considering the numbers-a major opportunity to propel the immersive business and, thus, the Digital Economy even further.

The UK government has recognised immersive technologies as an important driver for the economic prosperity of the country and consequently set the creation of innovative, cutting-edge immersive products, services and experiences as one of the 15 key challenges within its Industrial Strategy white paper-named the Audience of the Future challenge. As a result, significant financial resources have recently been committed and are currently being invested, through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), to position the UK as a world leader in the field of immersive by facilitating the collaboration between business and research communities. The recently awarded £5.6 million StoryFutures project lead by Royal Holloway, University of London, in which Brunel University London are an academic research partner, is an example of this investment. The project, aiming to bring immersive into the mainstream, is a recipient of the ISCF funding channelled via the Creative Industry R&D Partnerships programme by AHRC. Inclusive Immersion complements StoryFutures by focusing on the user population of people with impairments/disabilities and older people-a significant part of the future audience for immersive that is not considered within the mainstream-focused AHRC project.

The business demand for Inclusive Immersion is to be further motivated by the Equality Act, which obliges businesses and other organisations to the non-discriminatory practice with regards to impairments/disabilities and age. As the immersive tech enters the mainstream, businesses will seek to make their immersive content, services and products inclusive in order to comply with the act.

To achieve the maximum impact of this project, we will build on the past successes in ensuring that our research is appropriately disseminated to the various stakeholders: End-Users, the Creative Industries: Technology Companies and Content Creators and Distributors, including Media and Outreach, Third Sector and Policy Makers and Academia and Research Communities.