SYMPOSIUM: XR Access 2020

XR Access 2020研讨会将召集无障碍和XR领域的研究人员和其他利益攸关方分享研究成果，并制定一项计划，使残疾人能够使用这些技术。这笔资金将支持学术机构和非营利组织的与会者，他们的工作涉及无障碍和XR(统称为混合、增强、虚拟和扩展现实，以及360视频)。今年的活动将于7月20日至21日在纽约市康奈尔科技公司的Verizon高管教育中心举行，在2019年研讨会开始的工作基础上，120多名研究人员、倡导者和行业领袖齐聚一堂，讨论XR无障碍的现状，并规划更无障碍的未来。2020年研讨会的范围涵盖XR行业的内容创作、软件开发和硬件方面，它是XR Access Initiative的一个关键方面，旨在解决与语言、运动、视觉、听力和年龄相关的障碍、认知障碍以及情感和学习障碍的用户的需求。目前，美国有2700万人视力低下，4100万人是聋人或重听人，1800万人行动不便。对于这些人中的许多人来说，使用XR设备和消费XR内容是不可能的。将这些用户纳入180亿美元的XR市场所需的研究、设计和宣传仍处于萌芽阶段。本次研讨会将通过促进对改善XR可达性的具体机制的新研究，产生广泛的影响。它还将有助于将科学家与倡导者、教育工作者和商界领袖联系起来，以确保在残疾人的投入下实现无障碍科学的进步，并在规模上可行。来自学术界和非营利组织的残疾人将被鼓励参加，因为如果不让残疾倡导者和残疾用户从一开始就坐在谈判桌上，任何关于提高技术无障碍的讨论都不可能以有意义的方式进行。XR技术即将成为主流。它们将很快重塑我们的工作、学习和娱乐方式。然而，今天XR技术无法为世界各地的数百万残疾人所用。从本质上讲，它们给那些在技术设计过程中通常不考虑能力的人带来了一系列全新的挑战。研讨会将促进讨论和合作研究，以解决以下问题：-不同感知能力的人如何体验XR应用？-XR硬件应该如何设计以考虑不同能力的人的需求？-哪些辅助功能可以增强所有用户通过XR的沉浸感、享受和学习？研讨会还将更广泛地讨论关于新兴技术的可访问性的性质和未来的更深层次的问题。与之前在XR中开发辅助技术以支持残疾人的工作不同，研讨会旨在促进使XR技术本身变得可用的研究。为了确保研讨会上开始的研究的影响，活动的议程将包括跨行业工作组的会议，每个会议的重点是增加XR Access倡议在特定领域的影响。指南和实践小组将综合XR领域现有的无障碍政策和实践，并创建适用于其他新兴技术的新政策和实践。同样，外联小组将专注于制定战略，使关键的企业利益相关者和公众认识到XR无障碍的必要性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The XR Access 2020 Symposium will convene researchers and other stakeholders in the area of accessibility and XR to share research and devise a plan for making these technologies accessible to persons with disabilities. This funding will support attendees from academic institutions and nonprofit groups whose work touches accessibility and XR (collectively mixed, augmented, virtual, and extended reality, and 360 video). This year's event, to be held at Cornell Tech's Verizon Executive Education Center in New York City on July 20-21, builds on work begun at the 2019 Symposium that brought together over 120 researchers, advocates, and industry leaders to discuss the state of XR accessibility and plan for a more accessible future. The scope of the 2020 Symposium spans the content creation, software development, and hardware aspects of the XR industry, and it is a key aspect of the XR Access Initiative which aims to address the needs of users with speech, motor, vision, hearing and age-related impairments, with cognitive limitations, and with emotional and learning disabilities. There are currently 27 million Americans with low vision, 41 million who are Deaf or hard of hearing, and 18 million with limited mobility. For many of these people, using XR devices and consuming XR content is not possible. The research, design, and advocacy needed to include these users in the 18-billion-dollar XR market is still nascent. This Symposium will have broad impact by catalyzing new research into the specific mechanisms for improving XR accessibility. It will also serve to connect scientists to advocates, educators, and business leaders to ensure that advances in the science of accessibility are implemented with input from people with disabilities and are viable at scale. Persons with disabilities from academia and nonprofits will be encouraged to attend, because no conversation about increasing accessibility in technology can go forward in a meaningful manner without including disability advocates and users with disabilities at the table from the beginning.XR technologies are on the cusp of becoming mainstream. They will soon reshape the way we work, learn and play. However, today XR technologies are not accessible to the millions of people with disabilities around the world. By their nature, they introduce a completely new set of challenges for people whose abilities are not typically considered in the technology design process. The Symposium will stimulate discussion and collaborative research to address questions such as:- How can people with different perceptual abilities experience XR applications?- How should XR hardware be designed to consider the needs of people with different abilities?- What accessibility features can enhance immersion, enjoyment, and learning through XR for all users?The Symposium will also address deeper questions about the nature and future of accessibility for emerging technologies more broadly. Unlike prior work that develops assistive technology in XR to support people with disabilities, the Symposium aims to foster research that makes XR technologies themselves accessible. To ensure the impact of the research begun at the Symposium, the event's agenda will include meetings of cross-industry working groups, each focusing on increasing the XR Access Initiative's impact in a specific area. The Guidelines and Practices group will synthesize existing accessibility policies and practices in the XR space, and create new ones that are applicable to other emerging technologies. Similarly, the Outreach group will focus on creating strategies for bringing awareness of the need for XR accessibility to key corporate stakeholders and to the general public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.