I’ve been hanging out in the virtual world Second Life a lot recently wrapping my head around all the amazing things you can do there. Something that’s really struck me however is how this could be a real opportunity for people who are restricted in some way in their day to day lives.
Working as a Web Accessibility Consultant this is hardly surprising but what really got me excited was thinking of the opportunities that it could give a friend of mine, Sam, who was paralysed in a car accident a couple of years ago. Imagine if he could hang out in Second Life, meet people, go to concerts, take courses, fly, earn his own money, even play football with his Dad.
To do all this though Second Life needs to be accessible which, from what I have seen so far, it isn’t fully so I am currently researching how Second Life fairs in terms of accessibility from the perspective of all users including people with mobility, visual, hearing and cognitive impairments. To do this though I need your help. Rather than just put on my auditors hat I’d like to also hear what your experiences are with Second Life including the good as well as the bad, what you find troublesome, what features you like most and if you use an access technology or change your browser settings.
If you’d like to share you thoughts then leave a comment here or send an email to accesssecondlife@gmail.com.
Alan Mills | 26/07/2007 at 14:27 | Permalink
Sort of related but has anyone come across a Facebook type networking tool for people with Learning Disabilities to stay in touch with each other. Secure, very visual, that sort of thing?
Phil Teare | 26/07/2007 at 16:26 | Permalink
Hi Alan
While http://www.Chatterblogs.net may or may not quite suit your needs, we would may be able to build something that would be more tailored to what you want….
Feel free to email me. phil dot a dot teare at googlemail dot com
Cheers
Henny | 26/07/2007 at 16:36 | Permalink
Chatterblogs looks really interesting Phil. I’m wondering if the Talklets toolbar featured on it could be used by social networking sites such as Facebook as well. That would make them much more readable to people with learning difficulties.
Phil Teare | 30/07/2007 at 22:14 | Permalink
Hi Henny. Sorry I’ve not sent details yet (v busy…)
Yes, facebook mods are something we’re looking at. Tho Facebook tend to restrict all use of clientside processing on their domain.
Henny | 31/07/2007 at 8:47 | Permalink
I wonder if Talklets could be an app that people add Phil? That could be really interesting…
Phil Teare | 01/08/2007 at 10:23 | Permalink
Hmmm….
Tricky. They’ve excluded scripting, so embedding the service on their page seems to be tricky. Plus Facebook is heavily cookie and script dependent itself, making it very hard to proxy.
In short, not looking easy.
Henny | 01/08/2007 at 22:02 | Permalink
ah well, thanks for the clarification :-)
Jamie Smith | 02/08/2007 at 3:29 | Permalink
Folks from Florida Blind Services looked at the site Second life:
In a nutshell, Second Life locks out persons who are blind.
2 users, JAWS, high level of knowledge, unable to get in the door
1 user, low vision technology provided by operating system, unable to
get in the door
This system is not meeting even minimum standards.
The task was simple please login in to Second Life, so we can take a
look at the community.
For speech users there are no navigation tools at all. (no list menus,
no header levels) Moreover, the links, and graphics - when labeled -
are problematic. There was the typical “click here” and “read more”,
but there were also links that had no meaning whatsoever. Graphics
often that were labeled said stuff like “spacer gif” or had no meaning
whatsoever. But these two highly technical speech users were not going
to let this stop them. There were four links that said something to the
effect “join secondlife for free”. The links did not all go to the join
page. One user got stuck on a page. (target blank used to open windows
some of the time, some of the time it wasn’t.) Basically, one very
high end speech user was not able to get to join. - gave up at this
point. Second, user was provided sighted assistance to get to the
correct login page. The form itself had no “label for” or text for
speech to read most of the time. The user, being a highly motivated and
high end speech users got in and out of edit mode. The drop down list
(reads as combo box) only allowed user to select a “fictions last name”.
After playing for a while user figured out that the name was not
supposed to be “real”. When the person selected a fact last name, the
combination of the fictitious last name and the real name was already
taken. A window opened up, focus went to that window. The user had not
realized a new window opened. User required sighted assistance to
explain what happened and to select a name not taken and to continue
login in processes. The person moved forward slowly, until, low and
behold there was a graphic with code on it used for verification. There
was a nice “Click Here” if you can’t read the graphic link. When you
clicked here, a new graphic displayed.
None of our staff were able to get in the door.
I actually watched the users attempt the log in process. I ended up
logging in to see what the community was about. I am very shocked that
any government entity would even consider being part of this community.
The clear 508 violations, the disenfranchising of persons who are can’t
afford broadband or latest technology, are just the tip of the ice berg.
THIS IS AN ADULT COMMUNITY. 18 and over only. I know on our site we
have students that often use it, and I know a few of the government
entities that are listed as using it and often used by teachers for
research. So will government entities now have one site for adults and
one site for “teens”? Do government sites what to share communities
that are very close to being pornographic (avatars for one of the
woman’s pages - note I thought the world was going to be for women…
Maya, )?
Henny | 02/08/2007 at 9:00 | Permalink
Thanks so much for sharing that Jamie. I’ll have a proper read through and add it to my research. I’ve also set up an email address for people to write into with their experiences when accessing Second Life called accesssecondlife@gmail.com
lola | 22/08/2007 at 20:06 | Permalink
Hello, I’m in my final year of university, studying for a degree in multimedia arts. I am currently working on a project, looking into how Second Life can be made more accessible to visually impaired users. If you have a visual disability and use or tried to use Second Life before, i would really appreciate if you could take some time to fill in this questionnaire. The information you provide will be used only for this research. It will help me identify the most problematic areas of SL and try to fix these problems in the more accessible prototype of the Second Life viewer i am developing.
The questionnaire can be found here http://www.thenmedia.net/test/quest/survey.php
Thank you for your time.
Roel | 19/10/2007 at 22:37 | Permalink
Hello Lola,
Do you already have some results of the questionnaire? I am very interested. Where can I find some results? Is it possible to mail you? I am from the Netherlands, Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven, and we have an island in Second life where our students (there are also students with a visual disability) work on educational projects.
If you’d like to share your results, then leave a comment here or send an email to fontyspth@gmail.com
Regards,
Roel.
Henny | 22/10/2007 at 18:45 | Permalink
Lola, it would be really interesting to know how your research went and if there is anything we can help you with. Roel, I’d also be interested to visit your Island in SL and meet some of your students. I’ll drop you a line Roel but if lola or anyone else is interested in meeting up in-world then drop me a line at accesssecondlife@gmail.com and we can swap details there.
Henny
Constantinos | 21/11/2007 at 4:50 | Permalink
I am a student at university and I am currently doing an evaluation report on second life. I would be really greatful, if anyone would share their experience and thoughts on improvement on second life
Constantinos | 21/11/2007 at 4:51 | Permalink
my e-mail is conva49@googlemail.com
Henny | 21/11/2007 at 10:37 | Permalink
Hi All,
I’ve been following a lot of the work that has been going on around the accessibility of the SL grid and collating it. Some time soon I will post it up here but tend to post more about SL on my own blog at http://iheni.wordpress.com so come and check there for bits of information.
Henny
Lola | 06/12/2007 at 21:55 | Permalink
Hi all, it’s really encouraging to see all the work that’s being done to make SL more accessible. I am in the process of writing up the findings of my research. Should be done by the end of this December. If anyone is interested in getting the results or sharing information you can email me at secondlife_test@yahoo.com
Nik Radford | 31/01/2008 at 11:24 | Permalink
I know this is going to sound awful. But if someone can’t see the 3D virtual world, what’s the point? They have to be able to navigate the world. It isn’t a website, the actual website is just where you create your account, you can’t access any of the communities without getting a client and the Linden Labs client is a 3d graphics application. Your only sense available for navigating the world is sight or sound, since touch, smell and taste have yet to be implemented electronically.
If SL was simply a chat room, I’d understand that things need to be sorted. But unfortunatly, due to the nature of the beast, it can’t be made accessible. Just a query, what do blind or very visionally impaired people do when faced with games like FEAR, WoW and the like? Where the interaction is mainly in a visual 3D world?
As to the less important point of requiring broadband connections. Thats simple, SL transfers HUGE amounts of data at any one time, the 3D world is “streamed” from the internet to your computer (unlike world of warcraft, where the world exists on your hard drive and only user positions and such are sent).
ShanDae Bachem | 01/02/2008 at 2:14 | Permalink
In regards to the issue with starting an account (and that security code)…
It’s been a bit since I started my account. Isn’t there an option to have the code read aloud? This is commonly done on other sites. It would be interesting to learn how someone else who is visually impaired would navigate ‘inworld’.
Henny | 29/02/2008 at 19:13 | Permalink
Nik: Thank you for your comments, you raise some issues that I’m sure others have thought and not felt they can post here. There are many people with visual impairments as well as a huge amount of other people with disabilities that affect their mobility, speech or hearing who love to be in virtual worlds and play games online. I don’t believe the fact that you don’t have one sense and the application in question, such as the SL grid, is excessively difficult to make accessible is reason enough to exclude folk. I know many people in SL who are effectively stuck at home unable to go out who find that SL is literally a lease of life.
For info there are plenty of online games that are accessible and there is much research and development going into making SL accessible too. IBM have a project looking into using sound for navigation and there are also projects looking at brain computer interfaces. I agree it is a hard task but let’s not let that be a reason not to try.
While not a legal person I would also say that there are quite possibly legal implications of locking people out. Many established international and small businesses use SL as a means of recruitment, employment and research. This could leave them in a vulnerable position if some of these services were available only in SL. And again, I would argue that people with disabilities, blind or otherwise, can find themselves isolated and marginalised so having easy access to a world of education and employment from the comfort of their own home is a huge thing.
ShanDae Bachem: You’re correct. CAPTCHA’s do have an alterative which is being read out loud. I blogged about CAPTCHA elsewhere in this blog and ran through the issues there. Using sound in-world is something IBM are looking at (see above). We already have a little bit of that in that the sound of the sea gets louder as you approach and conversations louder. Building on this and making it more accessible is certainly something that is being looked into and I imagine will be progressed.
Thanks for your comments, keep ‘em coming!