An AI Guide to Enhance Accessibility of Social Virtual Reality for Blind People

Evidence of virtual reality's (VR) efficacy in hospital settings coupled with the rise of inexpensive consumer devices have led to the development of social virtual reality (SVR) applications being incorporated in hospital settings. SVR provides opportunities for social interactions in virtual environments, allowing individuals to virtually socialize, regardless of geographic or mobility constraints. However, the full range of potential applications and the challenges of deploying SVR in hospital settings remain unexplored. We conducted a scoping review to characterize SVR applications studied in hospital settings to better understand SVR use for inpatient populations overall and in preparation for a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project investigating SVR use with a specific clinical population. In this scoping review, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, IEEE, and ACM Digital Library. After screening 2334 studies and reviewing 146 full texts, we identified 12 studies as eligible for analysis. Eleven of the 12 were published in the past 7 years, with none older than 12 years. As this is an emerging field, many publications were case or pilot studies, with small sample sizes ranging from 3 to 200 participants, and with mean participant ages that ranged from 9 to 75 years. Patient populations included those with stroke, cancer, COVID, as well as other health conditions. Discussion of privacy and accessibility concerns was limited, as was the reported influence of SVR on measures associated with inpatient medical treatment (such as, adherence to clinical treatment while in the hospital while in a SVR intervention), which we highlight as critical issues for SVR's clinical use. We discuss our findings in the context of potential future directions for research in this area.

This research expanded on prior work exploring the relationship between social media use, social support, and mental health by including the usage of social virtual reality (VR). In Study 1 (undergraduate students; n = 448) we examined divergent relationships between problematic social media use (e.g., Facebook, TikTok), total use, and users' mental health indicators (e.g., depression, anxiety, social isolation). To determine whether problematic social media use patterns extended to immersive 3-D environments, we sampled active social VR users (e.g., Rec Room) in Study 2 (n = 464). Problematic social VR use was related to decreased real-life social support (β = -.62, 95%CI [-.80, -.44]), but not to VR social support (β = -.06, 95%CI [-.25, .14]). Conversely, the amount of social VR use was only related to increased social VR (β = .06, 95%CI [.04, .15]) but not to real-life social support (β = -.02, 95%CI [-.05, .04]). Study 2 also revealed a finding that may be unique to the 3-D immersive environment: the amount of social VR use facilitated better mental health for VR users, but only through stronger perceived social support on social VR but not in real life. This result highlights the potential of immersive media to promote mental well-being by facilitating engaging and meaningful social interactions.

Social Virtual Reality (VR) platforms enable multiple users to be present together in the same virtual environment (VE) and interact with each other in this space. These platforms are used in different application areas including teaching and learning, conferences, and meetings. To improve the engagement, safety, and overall positive experience in such platforms it is important to understand the effect they have on users’ emotional states and self-awareness while being in the VE. In this work, we present a focus group study where we dis-cussed users’ opinions about social VR and we ran the focus group in a social VR platform created in Hubs by Mozilla. Our primary goal was to investigate users’ emotional states and self-awareness while using this platform. We measured these effects using positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) and Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ). The experiment involved 12 adult participants who were volunteers from around the world with previous experience of VR.

A growing body of research is examining the way that virtual reality (VR) technology might enrich the lives of older adults. However, no studies have yet examined how this technology---combining head mounted displays, motion tracking, avatars, and virtual environments---might contribute to older adult wellbeing by facilitating greater social participation (social VR). To address this gap, we conducted three workshops in which 25 older adults aged 70 to 81 explored the utility of social VR as a medium for communicating with other older adults. Participants first created embodied avatars that were controlled through natural gestures, and subsequently used these avatars in two high-fidelity social VR prototypes. Findings from the workshops provide insight into older adults' design motivations when creating embodied avatars for social VR; their acceptance of social VR as a communication tool; and their views on how social VR might play a beneficial role in their lives. Outcomes from the workshops also illustrate the critical importance our participants placed onbehavioural anthropomorphism ---the embodied avatars' ability to speak, move, and act in a human-like manner--- alongsidetranslational factors, which encapsulate issues relating to the way physical movements are mapped to the embodied avatar and the way in which errors in these mappings may invoke ageing stereotypes. Findings demonstrate the critical role that these characteristics might play in the success of future social VR applications targeting older users. We translate our findings into a set of design considerations for developing social VR systems for older adults, and we reflect on how our participants' experiences can inform future research on social virtual reality.

We share our experiences of teaching virtual reality with Ubiq, an open-source system for building social virtual reality (VR). VR as a subject touches on many areas, including perception, human-computer interaction, and psychology. In our VE module, we consider all aspects of VR. In recent years, networked VR, and in particular social VR, has become increasingly relevant, at the same time as demand for online and hybrid teaching has increased. Commercial social virtual reality systems have proliferated, but for a number of reasons, this has not resulted in systems any more suitable for research and teaching. As a result we created Ubiq, a system for building social VR applications designed first for research and teaching. In this article, we describe how Ubiq came to be, and our experiences of using it in our virtual environments module over the last two years.

Social Virtual Reality (VR), where people meet in virtual spaces via 3D avatars, is used by children and adults alike. Children experience new forms of harassment in social VR where it is often inaccessible to parental oversight. To date, there is limited understanding of how parents and non-parent adults within the child social VR ecosystem perceive the appropriateness of social VR for different age groups and the measures in place to safeguard children. We present results of a mixed-methods questionnaire (N=149 adults, including 79 parents) focusing on encounters with children in social VR and perspectives towards children's use of social VR. We draw novel insights on the frequency of social VR use by children under 13 and current use of, and future aspirations for, child protection interventions. Compared to non-parent adults, parents familiar with social VR propose lower minimum ages and are more likely to allow social VR without supervision. Adult users experience immaturity from children in social VR, while children face abuse, encounter age-inappropriate behaviours and self-disclose to adults. We present directions to enhance the safety of social VR through pre-planned controls, real-time oversight, post-event insight and the need for evidence-based guidelines to support parents and platforms around age-appropriate interventions.

Social anxiety often manifests through behaviors such as reduced gaze to the eyes and lower speech volume. While these markers have been examined in face-to-face interactions, large-scale assessments remain challenging. Social virtual reality (VR) offers a promising alternative by enabling naturalistic interactions in which behavior can be captured at scale, but it remains unclear if people show naturalistic behavior in such artificial environments. We examined whether behavioral and physiological markers associated with social anxiety in real-life interactions similarly emerge in dyadic social VR. We additionally examined whether these patterns overlap with patterns linked to the broader constructs of psychopathology and verticality. In this cross-sectional study, 128 participants (105 females, 22 males, 1 diverse; age 18-51 years; mean age 22.60, SD 3.57 years), recruited from a university student population, engaged in a 30-minute avatar-mediated dyadic conversation in social VR while physically located in separate rooms. We assessed gaze toward the partner's eyes, smiling, and speaking behavior by using the VR headsets' built-in eye trackers, face trackers, and microphones, and assessed high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) by using an electrocardiogram. Relationships between traits and behavioral and physiological measures were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models (α=.05). Social anxiety was linked to reduced gaze toward the partner's eyes while speaking (β=-.20, 95% CI -0.35 to -0.04; t126=-2.51; P=.01), quieter speech (β=-.18, 95% CI -0.35 to -0.01; t126=-2.12; P=.04), and reduced HF-HRV (β=-.23, 95% CI -0.39 to -0.08; t119=-3.00; P=.003). These findings were not entirely specific to social anxiety, as Pearson correlations revealed similar patterns for social anxiety and psychopathology (r=0.94, 95% CI 0.75-0.99; t7=7.61; P<.001), whereas verticality was linked to an overall opposite pattern (social anxiety: r=-0.92, 95% CI -0.98 to -0.65; t7=-6.14; P<.001; psychopathology: r=-0.83, 95% CI -0.96 to -0.38; t7=-3.98; P=.005). In dyadic interactions in social VR, social anxiety was associated with behavioral and physiological modulations similar to those observed in face-to-face interactions, indicating heightened social stress and submissiveness even in avatar-mediated communication. Patterns were similar for heightened psychopathology and reversed for verticality, indicating that these traits may lie on a shared social-behavioral spectrum. Extending previous research focused on face-to-face interactions or reactions toward artificial agents displayed in VR, this study is the first to provide a comprehensive account of the behavioral and physiological modulations associated with social anxiety in avatar-based human-human interactions. Since social VR setups allow researchers to assess a rich set of behavioral data as a byproduct of the setup's core functionality, the technique opens novel possibilities to detect social stress, track therapeutic progress, or tailor interventions to individual behavior when interactions take place in VR.

The boom of commercial social virtual reality (VR) platforms in recent years has signaled the growth and wide-spread adoption of consumer VR. Social VR platforms draw aspects from traditional 2D virtual worlds where users engage in various immersive experiences, interactive activities, and choices in avatar-based representation. However, social VR also demonstrates specific nuances that extend traditional 2D virtual worlds and other online social spaces, such as full/partial body tracked avatars, experiencing mundane everyday activities in a new way (e.g., sleeping), and an immersive means to explore new and complex identities. The growing popularity has signaled interest and investment from top technology companies who each have their own social VR platforms. Thus far, social VR has become an emerging research space, mainly focusing on design strategies, communication and interaction modalities, nuanced activities, self-presentation, harassment, privacy, and self-disclosure. These recent works suggest that many questions still remain in social VR scholarship regarding how to ethically conduct research on these sites and which research areas require additional attention. Therefore, in this paper, we provide an overview of modern Social VR, critically review current scholarship in the area, raise ethical considerations for conducting research on these sites, and highlight unexplored areas.

Computer-mediated communication tools facilitate international collaboration projects between foreign language learners and peers abroad (O’Dowd, 2018). Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications allow for synchronous interactions and task-based communication in which learners can experience telepresence and immersion and conversate in a foreign language. Based on previous pilot experiences (Jauregi-Ondarra, Gruber, &amp; Canto, 2020, 2021), this Virtual Exchange (VE) project aims to investigate how the specific affordances of Social High-immersion VR (SHiVR) in conjunction with designed tasks influence interaction patterns, and learning episodes. The VE took place between two groups of university students in the Netherlands (N=15) and Cyprus (N=14) through SHiVR in March 2022. The main aims of the tasks were to raise student intercultural awareness, stimulate task-based communication processes using English as a lingua franca and digital pedagogical competences of language education students. Different sources of data were gathered and analysed. In this paper, we describe and present the pedagogical experience and the initial results.

In the stage of aging society and population aging, the social needs of the elderly are widely discussed by researchers. Especially driven by the demand of tele-medical treatment and tele-rehabilitation therapy, it is vital for the elderly to integrate into virtual communities by combining social virtual reality (VR) with different medical services and entertainment needs. In addition, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, it is more difficult for people to have face-to-face contacts. With more remote consultation, entertainment and virtual social connectivity, the application of social VR is more urgent and valuable. However, there is little discussion on the acceptability and influencing factors of social VR among the elderly at present. Therefore, in order to get further data, we used (1) early stage semi-structured interviews and then (2) Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) questionnaires for investigation. One hundred fourteen elderly people aged 60–89 living in the metropolitan area of Taipei were taken as the subjects. To help them understand the situation and state of using social VR, these elderly people were asked to use a head-mounted display (HMD) to experience social VR games. The preliminary results showed that the elderly had obvious preference for entertainment (32.4%) and medical treatment (31.3%). The interview showed that this was related to the physiological condition or medical needs of the age range. In order to further understand how social VR would affect the social life of the elderly, we proposed the further demand structure of UTAUT Model based on the interview of both experts and the elderly. The model structures include (1) Performance Expectancy, (2) Perceived Enjoyment, (3) Social Influence, (4) User Attitude, (5) Behavioral Intention, and so on. These structures were applied to conduct interviews and questionnaires to find out the influence extent and relevance of the elderly on different structural needs, and suggestions were given accordingly. The results of the above interviews showed that (1) the elderly thought that the functions of entertaining and interacting of social VR could increase their social opportunities, and also meet medical needs (teleconference, cognitive decline, etc.), (2) the closeness of social relations (between family members, friends, doctors, and places), and also affect the relevance of Perceived Enjoyment (β = 0.77, p = 0.000 &lt; 0.05). The results of these phenomena and interviews showed the interplay between the demand structures and their special relevance. They also indicated that as to social VR technologies, various demands and functional issues of the elderly need to be considered, and these demands would appear in the subtle usage, and different social VR interfaces and functions would emerge based on their special living ways and physical and psychological demands.

This chapter covers the convergence of Social Media Networks and Virtual Reality Systems, labeled as Social Virtual Reality. It reviews the evolution of the World Wide Web from a single user, static experience into the futuristic 3D multi user interactive experience. This is followed by a review of bulk data collection in Virtual Reality, and the ethical risks and threats to privacy that this could create for Social Virtual Reality users. The chapter ends with recommendations to mitigate the ethical risks and threats to privacy for adult VR users, parents of VR users, psychologists, VR software and hardware manufacturers, governments and other regulatory institutions and VR researchers.

Virtual Reality (VR) has long been an important research focus in HCI since the 1960s. In the past five years, we have seen a more pronounced rise of VR, especially social VR. In particular, social VR is becoming increasingly popular within the LGBTQ community. Yet, little research explores how LGBTQ users participate in social VR and how social VR has potential to support them by affording a range of inclusive interactions. Based on eight interviews and two months of participatory observations, in this paper we report findings of our preliminary study of LGBTQ users’ engagement in social VR, especially regarding how social VR may afford social support for these users. Our study contributes to better understanding the nuanced experiences of LGBTQ users in social VR so as to create more inclusive and safe social VR spaces for all.

As social Virtual Reality (VR) grows in prevalence, new possibilities for embodied and immersive social interaction emerge, including varied forms of interpersonal harm. Yet, challenges remain regarding defining, identifying, and mitigating said harm in social VR. In this paper, we take an alternative approach to understanding and designing solutions for interpersonal harm in social VR through the lens of consent, which circumvents the lack of consensus and social norms on what should be defined as harm in social VR and reflects the embodied, immersive, and offline-world-like nature of harm in social VR. Through interviews with 39 social VR users, we offer one of the first empirical explorations on how social VR users understand consent as "boundaries," (re)purpose existing social VR features for practicing consent as "boundary setting," and envision the design of future consent mechanics in social VR to balance protection and interaction expectations to mitigate interpersonal harm as "boundary violations" in social VR. This work makes significant contributions to CSCW and HCI research by (1) uncovering how social VR users craft novel conceptualizations of consent as boundaries and harm as unwanted boundary violations, and (2) providing three foundational principles for designing future consent mechanics in social VR informed by actual social VR users.

Online harassment against women - particularly in gaming and virtual worlds contexts - remains a salient and pervasive issue, and arguably reflects the systems of offline structural oppression to control women's bodies and rights in today's world. Harassment in social Virtual Reality (VR) is also a growing new frontier of research in HCI and CSCW, particularly focusing on marginalized users such as women. Based on interviews with 31 women users of social VR, our findings present women's experiences of harassment risks in social VR as compared to harassment targeting women in pre-existing, on-screen online gaming and virtual worlds, along with strategies women employ to manage harassment in social VR with varying degrees of success. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on harassment in social VR by highlighting how women's marginalization online and offline impact their perceptions of and strategies to mitigate harassment in this unique space. It also provides a critical reflection on women's mitigation strategies and proposes important implications to rethink social VR design to better prevent harassment against women and other marginalized communities in the future metaverse.

The increasingly popular social virtual reality (VR) is dramatically transforming how people meet, interact, and socialize online. These immersive digital spaces blend aspects of the online and offline worlds, creating new opportunities for online interactivity. Yet, questions still remain about what individuals actually do in social VR and how they envision and reflect on the design of social VR technologies. In this paper, we report our findings of an interview study (N=30)that investigated what made activities on these platforms meaningful to users as well as users' recommendations for designing social VR to better support such activities. Our findings expand current literature on social dynamics and sociality in online digital spaces by focusing on social VR. We also inform future design directions to create more socially supportive and satisfying social VR space.