Accessibility in a Virtual World Before Oculus

ALICE: Welcome to our field trip that we have titled Accessibility in a Virtual World Without Oculus. We're present tonight as avatars in Second Life. Today we're going to visit the home of the Virtual Ability community in the mature virtual world, Second Life. First, my co-hostess and I will introduce ourselves. Then we will tour several different sites, highlighting visible, invisible, and human factors accessibility features, and we'll also talk about the reasons for accessibility.

I am Gentle Heron. That's my avatar. And I'm Alice Krueger in the physical world. I am the president of Virtual Ability, Inc. And a former education researcher and an educator. And I get to do most of the talking this afternoon or evening. Eme? EME: Hello, everyone. I'm Eme Capalini in Second Life. This is me here. And I am Ann Ludwig in real life. I'm Vice President of development for Virtual Ability. And I'm formerly in marketing in advertising. So I'm gonna be sharing my screen.

So you'll be seeing the world as I see it. And I'll try to go slowly. So try not to get too nauseous while we're sharing the screen here. ALICE: A bit of background. The Virtual Ability community in Second Life began in 2007. It is an international cross-disability peer support community of over 1,200 members. And Virtual Ability, Inc, is a 501c3 non-profit, and it supports our work in virtual worlds like Second Life.

I'm going to pause for questions about halfway through our tour. As Thomas said, I may not see or hear your questions if you put them in Zoom or in YouTube. But they will get them to us. The mission of the Virtual Ability community is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds.

And as those of you who use virtual worlds know, orientation begins before you enter the virtual world. The Second Life website is very clear about the system requirements. What your computer needs to be able to do, in order to handle the world. It is a heavy graphics environment. And Dave has posted into the chat the URL for Second Life's system requirements.

Our own website, Virtual Ability's website, shows what you have to be able to do. Either physically, natively, or with assistive technology, in order to operate a Second Life avatar. And Dave is gonna post that link as well. Yep, there it is. We think that's important to know. Just as important as knowing what you need to have, in terms of a computer.

Virtual Ability is an official Second Life community gateway. And that means we can register people for a Second Life account. We can get them started in the world, right from our website. And that is helpful. They don't need to go through the Second Life website at all. It's not screen reader accessible. We are now at the beginning of our new resident orientation path. And this is part of our public Virtual Ability Island. It was designed as a self-teaching system for a newcomer.

To learn the basic skills necessary to operate an avatar in this virtual world environment. Eme was the leader of the design and build team for this island. And she employed extensive user testing by people with lots of different kinds of disabilities during the design phase. This path was designed using the principles of Andragogy and universal design. So that's the theoretical background. Andragogy is the theory of adult education, and if you're not familiar with that, that is now posted in the chat. Link for that. And universal design provides guidance principles for accessibility. And that's posted as well. Thank you, Dave.

I want to make an important note to the designers and developers in that chat. That universal design is not intended just to benefit persons with disabilities. It's universal. The lessons on this orientation path are a spiral curriculum, for those of you who are educators.

You use the skills you've just learned, in order to learn the next skill. The path is also designed modularly. So you can quit at any time and come back and pick right up where you left off. And you can go at your own speed. We realized we would have a bimodal population coming in.

Some people would be experienced gamers. And some people would have very little experience, or maybe no experience previously, with a virtual world or even with a computer. One of the things you'll notice about the signage on this path is that user testing by people with low vision encouraged us to get rid of the vertical white signs. And we now have slightly backwards tilted signs that have light cream textured background. Against the font. And they showed us that this was easier for them to read in the default beginner avatar mode.

Now, there are some things that are nice about Second Life in terms of accessibility. There is a lot of stuff that's already built in. There are a lot of options that are offered. And you can almost always do things in a variety of manners.

So here is a way that you can use a pop-up window to move. You can use WASD keys. You can move using the arrow keys. And if we walk down just a little bit further... This is where Thomas is.

You can see that you can change the font size. You can enlarge the text. You can change the color of the text. These are all preferences. These are options. And what's nice is that these are not add-ons. It's better. Because they're built into the system itself. Now, many of the accessibility features that are designed into the environment can be made invisible to the user. For instance, if you look, you'll see that there are rope railings, rope borders, all along the path. And there are arrows on the ground. And that gives you directional guidance through the path. But to make the path safer for newcomers, because honestly, newcomers often have trouble controlling the movement of their avatars, Eme added invisible, impenetrable walls outside the rope borders. You can't wander off-course. And she's now made those invisible walls red, so that you can see them.

Most of the time, they're not visible at all. So you feel like you're just walking along the ropes. And although you can fly in this world, you can't fly on this part, the beginning part of the path. Newcomers, we found, tend to get lost when they fly. So we just don't allow them to fly on the learning path, until they've received instructions on how to do so safely.

Now, there's one thing you're not gonna see on this course, or anywhere on our lands. And that's that old familiar "handicap accessible" symbol on the blue background with the stylized wheelchair. We don't need to segregate people with disabilities. We don't want to segregate people with disabilities. Everything here is as accessible as we can make it.

Now, I don't want to take us through the entire path tonight. But if you were to sign up for a Second Life account through our website, your brand-new avatar will spawn right at the beginning of this orientation path. And you can go through it at your leisure. I do want to mention that because totally blind people use different viewer software that interfaces with their screen reader, we orient them individually. We usually have a blind Virtual Ability member assigned as their mentor, to assist them in setting up and operating their viewer. Since it's a little trickier than for a sighted person, because there are several different kinds of screen readers they might be using. And a special note to developers of virtual world environments: The absolute most important thing that you can do is to use standard technologies and/or open APIs. That

is going to allow those of us who use assistive technology to easily hook into your environment. But I'm happy to say: So far, Virtual Ability hasn't found anyone we could not accommodate. We have members who operate Second Life with their feet. We have members who operate Second Life with one finger. Some use an on-screen keyboard. Some control everything with their eyes. We have a young lady who accesses Second Life in Braille. You name it, we've seen it. We accommodate it.

Now, for the next part of our tour, we're going to move to our public auditorium. You could walk there easily from the end of the orientation path. But tonight, we're going to take a quick teleport. We're going to stay on this same island, or Sim, as it's called.

We're just going to go to a different location on it. And Eme is gonna go over first. And we will follow. I'm going to put a link into the chat for those who are here in-world with us.

And all you need to do is to click on the link, and choose teleport. And you will head over to the auditorium. And I will come last.

And here we are at the auditorium. Our auditorium is designed not only to be accessible to the avatars that are using it, but it's also supposed to demonstrate accessibility features that would be helpful if they were used in the physical world. As you enter the auditorium, you will notice that there are no steps. It's all ramps. So come on inside.

And as you walk down the ramps, you will see behind the speaker podium, on the back wall of the auditorium, a large slide projector. Not only are projected PowerPoint images large, but there are built-in features of the platform that allow a person to zoom their camera in, to see the slides really enlarged. And also, if we have the presenter's permission, we can give copies of the slides to an individual who needs to look more closely at them.

If you'll look at the rows of seating, you will see that there are spaces for avatars in wheelchairs to sit right at the beginning of each of the rows of seats. As I'm doing now.

And I'm a wheelchair user in the physical world. And I really appreciate this feature of our auditorium. In the physical world, often I find myself separated away from my walkie friends. And I get to sit with the other wheelies back in a corner, segregated all by ourselves. But that doesn't happen in this auditorium. Plus -- this is cool -- there's room for people in wheelchairs to move in front of people who are seated, and not run over their toes.

You may also have noticed that we have a waterfall and lots of plants in the auditorium.

We don't always have that in the physical world. That's not just for aesthetics. We know that water and foliage and even this wonderful color scheme are soothing, and this is important when we have presentations with topics that may trigger emotional responses in audience members, for instance, who may have PTSD.

Now, those are some of the visible accessibility features in the auditorium construction. But there are some invisible features as well. For instance, each little oval seat cushion is individually numbered. That way, a greeter can tell a blind person which seat to sit in, if it's not already occupied.

And the blind person can find the designated seat cushion in the list that's read aloud of nearby objects, read for them by their screen reader. They can then click on that seat and sit down.

And that brings up another invisible feature. The names of items. The default name of things created in-world is "object". But let's pretend you're blind. And pretend someone is describing your environment. And they said: There's an object one meter in front of you. An object three meters to your left. And another object four and a half meters to your right.

With that information, you wouldn't know which object to sit on. Because it's a chair. And which object to open, because it's a door. So another invisible accessibility feature is appropriately naming items. And that kind of brings up the third aspect of accessibility: Human factors or assistance. And we design that in through our activity protocols.

We host two large international professional conferences each year. Our mental health symposium is in the spring. And the disability rights affirmation conference is in the fall. This year's IDRAC is going to be held on Friday, October 28th, here in this auditorium.

And the theme is: Access to Justice. We help our presenters offer their information in voice and text simultaneously. One way that they can do that is to prepare text ahead of time, as I have done, and then they use a teleprompter tool to put that at thing into nearby chat, so the audience can read along as the presenter reads aloud. And this of course is beneficial to our Deaf audience members. But additionally it's helpful for those who are hard of hearing. And people who get distracted -- maybe they've got ADHD -- they can scroll up the text chat, and then they can review whatever they missed.

And you certainly can't do that if you're listening to somebody. And people with short-term memory loss can take a copy of the text, so that they can review it later.

For speakers who prefer... I gave an example of that. I think you see that in the -- in Eme's screen share. For speakers who prefer to speak extemporaneously, they can use speech-to-text tools. Either the ones that are available on their computer operating systems' accessibility features, or they can use commercial tools such as Dragon Naturally Speaking. All of those work inside Second Life.

Or we've had CART transcriptionists, like Mirabai here. And that works. And we also have friends who quickly type the gist of what is spoken to provide text input in-world.

And as we know from universal design, the availability of text along with voice benefits other people who are not yet disabled. For instance, audience members may be distracted by their baby suddenly waking up. Or maybe their groceries are getting delivered, or they get a phone call. And they can scroll back up through the text to see what they missed.

We also know that people whose first language isn't English benefit as well. Because it's often easier to translate text than it is to translate spoken words.

Now, another human factor accessibility are the other people who are involved in our conference, as greeters. And where Eme is standing is where a greeter might stand. Not only do the greeters make our attendees feel welcome, but they can provide technical assistance, if someone is having problems seeing the slides or hearing the presenter. And since our audience includes people with behavior disorders, those people can be privately coached by a greeter about the appropriate ways to act, using the instant messaging system.

If the people can't or choose not to comply with standards of decorum for professional conferences, they can be quickly and silently removed from the venue.

Another accessibility feature in Second Life is the ability to tailor your avatar. There are many reasons a person might not feel comfortable with a default avatar. Many of our autistic individuals do not relate to their meatspace, their physical body. I've got an autistic friend. His avatar is a cube of lime Jell-o. With embedded fruit chunks.

That's how he chooses to present himself. People who use a wheelchair or other mobility device or people who have prosthetics may not feel comfortable presenting themselves as an avatar on two legs. And conversely, people who use those types of devices as assistive technology in the physical world can choose not to show that in the virtual world. So the ability to customize your avatar, to show or not show your disability, is an important accessibility feature.

I've talked so far a lot about the how-to of accessibility in Second Life. And next we're going to visit a different space, to see a bit about the why of accessibility. But before we do that, I'd like to see if there are any questions so far. THOMAS: Sure. Let me take a couple questions.

Let's take one here. Let's see. Okay. So... I think for... You had mentioned someone was able to actually access the world using Braille. Could you just talk a little bit more about how that can work? Or how that works? ALICE: Sure. A Braille display is a series of pins that can pop up out of a background that simulates Braille dots. And what that display does is it interfaces with a screen reader, and instead of putting audio output, it puts Braille output. So she's reading what the screen reader would put out in audio, if it were talking. THOMAS: Great. Thank you. And one more question. About the auditorium that we're in right now: How did that design change over time? Or how much work did it take to get to

the version of the world that we see today? What was the process to build this space?

ALICE: I'm gonna ask Eme to answer that question, since she was the design and build person.

Eme, you want to unmute yourself? EME: Yes. Finding the unmute button is the hardest part of the evening. Actually... This is pretty much the original design. And there's a ton of features that we really didn't even go into. But all of this was actually done about 15 years ago. And it has worked beautifully. I don't know if you can really see the differences. But you can see there's different colors of the green. And that tells you when you're about to go from one level to the next. So there are a lot of subtle things that... You know, we don't even point out, that they're just built in. But we did so much testing, when we initially set this island up, that I mean... Even the Lindens, the people that run Linden Lab,

that run Second Life, they come and show our island to others, to show what can be done. So...

You know, it is a great example of how to use Second Life to its very best. With people... For people with disabilities. THOMAS: Great. Thank you so much. Yes, it's amazing for us to hear about 15 years ago, and still so many of the principles here are things that you don't see in what's built today.

EME: Exactly. THOMAS: Thank you so much for sharing this. And I think those are the questions we have for now. So I'll hand it back to Alice. Thank you.

ALICE: Thank you. And thank you, Ann, for that answer. Okay. So let's move on to the why accessibility is important for virtual worlds. And that's probably the easiest question to answer tonight. People with disabilities are here for the same reasons you not-disabled people are here.

We're here for classes. We're here for work. To create. We're here to meet new friends. And connect with old friends and family members. And we're here to have fun. Sometimes I get asked why blind people would want to be in Second Life, since it's such a highly visual experience.

And my response is that the physical world is just as visual an environment as the virtual world. With the proper tools, whether it's a good dog or a white cane in the physical world, or whether it's screen reader connected viewers for virtual worlds, blind people can and they want to participate fully in all worlds and activities. And why wouldn't they, really? So we're going to take a quick peek next at our public Healthinfo Island. It is just to the West of this Sim. And we could walk across a bridge to get over there. I think Eme is showing you the bridge. But we can also teleport. And that's quicker. So I'm gonna let Eme go first. And then I will put a teleport link in the chat here, if I can find the right window. Like all of us tonight,

I've got a lot of windows open. EME: I'll just share real quick. Thomas wanted us to show you about how the map works in Second Life. And I am here. On Healthinfo Island.

And everyone else -- we were just right over here. So you can see the green dots are the people. And so you can walk back and forth between those two islands or Sims, or regions. And here are our neighbors. But you have to teleport to get to any place else besides these two regions. So I'll just kind of scroll out a little bit, and show you some different regions that are around us.

But you can't fly to those regions. You can see that there's a lot of avatars over here. There's one here. And one up here. But if you want to visit that, you certainly can. You click on it.

And find... And then you can teleport to get over there. So I just wanted to quickly show you how getting around in Second Life works. ALICE: Thank you for that, Eme.

So now... Here we are. On Healthinfo Island. Here comes Nick.

I think we've got all of our guests over here.

And where we are now... This is the entrance to the path of support. Peer support is really important to people with disabilities. We don't usually come into a virtual world to find peer support. But we're generally pretty glad that it exists here. And actually, peer support may be more accessible to us here in the virtual world than it is in the physical world. Because we don't have transportation issues. And probably the most important thing is the veiled anonymity, when you're operating an avatar. It may allow you to be more comfortable to open up to other people more easily than if you were face-to-face with them. So if you want to come inside the path...

Hi, Carrie.

On this path, you're gonna see a series of posters. There's one for each of the... Over 120 different peer support groups that we've identified, that are operating inside Second Life in English. We know there are more in other languages. We just looked up the English ones, because we're English speakers. Some of these organizations are Second Life branches of physical world groups. For instance, the American Cancer Society is very active in Second Life.

And some of the groups that you'll see on posters here are set up by persons who don't have a connection to any outside agencies. And Eme is gonna demonstrate on her screen... When you click on, for example, the Virtual Ability poster, this green one right here...

Those of you in Zoom and on YouTube will notice that she got a chat message. And that message is telling her to click a link to get information about our community group. And it also tells the avatar names of contact persons for our group. In addition to that text message, she also got a note card that went into her inventory, that she can take out and read any time. It gives information about the group. But those of us here in the world didn't see any of that. We didn't see the message that Eme got.

We didn't see her getting a note card. Sometimes accessibility features are best offered privately. Nobody really needs to know that you are trying to find out when the alcoholics anonymous meetings are held. It's nice that this information can be given to you privately. Are there any questions about peer support in Second Life? THOMAS: I'll ask one, just because I'm curious. Do the groups exist... How do they notify people about joining this group? I'm sure this place is one place for people to come to find out.

But how do they often... Find people? ALICE: There's a search feature in Second Life. And you can search for groups. So if you had autism, you could type in the word autism and search for groups related to autism. Or multiple sclerosis or cancer or whatever.

So the search feature is the general way that people find out about different groups. And it's not just peer support groups. I mean, you can find groups... Hello, Sequoia. You can find groups for all kinds of activities and hobbies and stores and interests and languages.

And countries. There are just lots and lots of different types of groups that you can find in Second Life. These are just peer support.

There's also event calendars.

ALICE: Oh, yes. That's one thing we tell people. You're not gonna find people at places in Second Life. You're gonna find people at events in Second Life.

Okay. THOMAS: And one more question, just related to the feature of showing the private messaging functionality. Which I think is very interesting in Second Life. Is that something that as the world owner, you can have control over? You can add that feature into your world? Or is that a general Second Life feature?

ALICE: Eme, would you like to answer that? EME: Yes. That's a grid feature. So not just...

And we're not the world owner. We own this region. Or this island. But that is a feature that comes from the game itself. From Second Life itself. That everyone has access to instant message -- is what they call it in Second Life. But it's a direct message. Where you would find another social media. And we actually have a representative from Linden Lab here, Sequoia.

So welcome. Glad you're with us. I could... I see your avatar here, that's in front of me. And I can click on your back here. And I can send you an IM. And that is directly to you. It's private.

If I talk in nearby chat, that's gonna go to everyone.

But the message that I just sent you -- I said hi. You only see that. And I said hi, everyone! And everyone within 20 meters of me saw that message.

But you don't have to be close by for me to instant message you. You can be anywhere in Second Life, and you will get that message. We can also do that by voice. So there's a way to call you for a private phone call. Or we can also speak, which looks like Sequoia is doing. Although we can't hear her. I can tell that when you see the paragraphs, the lines around her white dot here, that I know that she's speaking. So... Which is also a signal to people that are Deaf to tell them that someone around them is voicing. So we do encourage people that are...

So now you see she's typing. We do encourage people that are hearing impaired or Deaf to have their voice on, so that they know when other people around them are voicing. So they can let them know... Please text with me. You know, I don't have... I can't hear. So yeah. So that is a feature that is nice. So you know when someone is talking.

Did that answer the question? THOMAS: Yeah. That's actually very awesome too. We've had that challenge in Mozilla Hubs, when we've posted it, with the chat going to the entire group, and people getting overwhelmed. So that's really cool, that you have that ability.

EME: Yes, I hear you. We don't have the Second Life sound on. The people in Zoom cannot hear you. But we did see your parentheses above your head!

THOMAS: If you all don't mind too, I have one more question from online.

EME: Sure, sure. THOMAS: Just a question. So for text that's in the virtual world, i.e., on one of the virtual sign boards or posters, are screen readers able to hook into those natively to read? Or is it accessed using OCR? Or something else? ALICE: I can answer that.

The posters are not text. To a sighted person, it looks like text. But it's actually an image. So no. They cannot see the poster. But I'll talk about that at our next stop. One more stop?

THOMAS: Yeah, we're ready. EME: Actually, just to let you know, these posters that you see here were made in PowerPoint. And uploaded as a jpg into the virtual world. So you can do an entire PowerPoint presentation in Second Life as well. So that is very... It's great, when we want to have presentations. You can do an entire PowerPoint presentation. But that's where these posters were created.

And then converted to a jpg. Then they're uploaded into the world and put on a poster. And I also want to mention that... Everything... Almost everything that you see in-world is created by a resident. The Linden Lab or the creators for Second Life, they do some...

Do create some things. But the majority of it is by somebody that came in-world, and is just like you. That has no idea what anything is. They learned how to use the tools that come with Second Life. And they are able to create these things, and a lot of people actually sell the things they create. And so... Not only do they sell them, but they get game money for when they sell them. And then they can take that game money out as dollars. US dollars. All right. So let's go on. Next.

ALICE: I know. There's a lot of excitement, isn't there?

EME: There's a lot. Sorry. I get excited. ALICE: That's okay. This is gonna be our last stop. And because it's right up the hill from the Path of Support, we're gonna walk up there.

We're gonna see an exhibit about chlorine and health. And if you prefer not to walk, and this is another one of those accessibility features, you can teleport using that link. But Eme is gonna walk up. I'll walk up also. We're just gonna go outside the path here.

She's not gonna go on the grass. I'm gonna go on the grass.

You're welcome to sit on the seats, if you'd like. Use your camera to look around. Or you can stand. It's okay. So we have 8 different displays and exhibits of posters here on Healthinfo Island.

What they are is a source of static asynchronous health and wellness information. We change the posters every month. In October, a lot of the poster sets will relate to the topics of the conference theme, access to justice. And the reason we have these poster sets up is to support our work to educate the general public and our community, of course. About health and wellness topics. And we've built accessibility into the design of these poster sets. The posters all have just a short amount of text, and usually a related image.

And this is a minimum text. It allows people with cognitive disabilities to learn the most important points of the topic. But a lot of people would like additional information. So Eme, if you would click on that second poster there... There she goes. And those of you who are looking in Zoom will see that you get a lot of text in chat.

And again, like in the path of support posters, that text only goes to the person who clicks. Not to everybody around us. So none of us in-world saw this text that Eme is looking at. Now, it gives you actually... More than just some more text, which is nice. But it also gives you live links. In the text chat. And Eme is...

(audio drop) if you are really interested in this topic, you can dig deeper into the topic. You can find more information that way. So we've got three levels of information in one poster. Our blind people know that they can teleport to this entrance poster, where I'm standing. Every one of our sets of posters has a particular entrance poster.

And if you click on the entrance poster, it gives you a note card about the display or the exhibit, in addition to some click text. Now, that note card -- and I think Eme can show you the note card -- there it is. And her inventory. And there is the note card.

That note card contains all of the text on the posters. All of the text that comes out when you click on the posters. And it also contains a description of all of the images on the posters. So from that note card, the blind people in our community get the same information that sighted people do from going through this poster set. But as we learned with universal design and have seen several other places, this benefits other people as well. People who need to review the material. People who get interrupted. It's very helpful to have that kind of a note card.

So... To conclude tonight, Virtual Ability has found that Second Life can be adequately accessible using visible, invisible, built-in features and with human factors support as needed. Second Life is... Can be... Accessible to everyone. Second Life is free to users. I mean, yes, you can pay if you want to upgrade to premium.

But initially, it's free. And that's another accessibility feature. Because many people who are disabled are also very low in socio-economic realm. So...

You have to pay for geographical property here. How does Virtual Ability afford these islands where it offers services to its community members? And to the general public?

I started off by saying we were supported in the virtual world by that non-profit, Virtual Ability, Inc. And as a non-profit, of course, we accept donations. We accept game money in-world. And we accept physical world currency through our website.

Or you can mail contributions to our corporate office in Colorado. But we make most of our income through contracts that we hold with government agencies, physical world non-profits, education institutions, organizations that wish to do research or to deliver services in virtual worlds, and do it with full accessibility. For the past 15 years, we've helped those entities create accessible environments here and in other virtual worlds. We particularly like to train and hire people with disabilities to do this supportive work.

So, for instance, if you want to run a focus group, we have people with disabilities who are trained focus group facilitators. If you need to do HIPAA deidentification of text data, we have people with disabilities who are trained to do that. And of course, we have people who are trained to assist others in creating avatars, creating environments in Second Life, et cetera. If we can help you design, implement, or evaluate accessible virtual world environments, please feel free to contact us. You can contact Virtual Ability at [email protected].

We'd really like to work with you. I want to thank everybody for their attention tonight. And Eme and I and our other Virtual Ability people who have been tagging along are very happy to answer questions. We have a question in-world. When can we find information about the 2022 conference? In October? And we are still negotiating with a couple of our presenters.

When we get the schedule done, I'm hoping it will be done this week... I had hoped it would be done last week... But when we get the schedule set up, we will have that on the website. There's a conference link on the homepage of the website. Thank you for asking that question.

THOMAS: That's great. We'll definitely want to... I'll promote that from the meetup page as well. That's great it's coming up in October, your conference.

Great. I had a question, back on... You showed the note card text feature for this exhibit. And you were showing everything put together. Was that a design recommendation to put the note card at the beginning of the world? Or could you go over again how that card gets accessed when you come into the space? Or just how it gets designed? ALICE: Okay. At the beginning of each month, when we have new topics of our poster sets, we send out notices about what the eight new topics are.

And we send a SLURL, which is how you teleport to the first poster. And people who are blind -- their screen reader tells them they can read the note card. So they know where to go, to each of the eight entrance posters of the exhibits. And then they know to click on that entrance poster. And it will give them the note card.

Did that answer your question? It is definitely a design feature that we put in.

THOMAS: Yes. And so you... So in addition to each of the individual slides -- would have the note card? This is to make sure you put everything into a single document as well, to get it easy to access when people come in. I really like that. ALICE: Right, right. We don't always have to put note cards in each poster. Sometimes, like if we're giving a reference list, that'll be on a note card in a poster. Typically, the posters just have click text. The visual text that's on the poster and then the click text. But sometimes the poster will give out... For instance when we had a poster set about hydration. One of the posters gave out a glass of water.

THOMAS: That's cool. ALICE: You can do stuff like that.

THOMAS: Cool. Thanks. We've got another question here. Is there anything fundamental to the Second Life platform that's been a big challenge or barrier to designing for access, and also just from your work, I guess, saying that you do work with Linden, have you had any work where there was platform-wide changes that came from working with the accessibility community? And Linden and Second Life? ALICE: Biggest challenges?

DAVE: Mouselook. ALICE: Yeah, that was an interesting one early on.

When we first started, we found that mouselook, which is what a lot of gamers like to use... Unfortunately, if you're using an on-screen keyboard, you can't get out of mouselook easily. So we had to warn people using on-screen keyboards not to use mouselook. But now Second Life puts up a warning.

We learned this because one of our paralyzed users sat for several hours in front of his computer, not being able to get out of mouselook. THOMAS: Wow. That was able to be fixed? ALICE: Yes.

THOMAS: I think that's probably coming too... From some of our members, we're always looking how to figure out how to work with the companies directly that create these experiences. So I think hearing that you've been able to have a good working relationship with Linden is a positive thing too, about the work you've all been able to do. ALICE: Yeah, it's very important.

We can't expect them to make everything totally accessible on their end. But it is helpful that they are... They've provided a lot of options. And that way, we can help people find the options that work right for them. So that's... You know, there are so many varieties of disabilities. So many different kinds of needs. That... There's no one way that's gonna work for everybody. So the whole idea of providing lots of options is very important. And Second Life does that.

DAVE: Open standards and APIs is absolutely the key, though. That makes everything possible.

THOMAS: We second that. That sounds great. One of the reasons why we liked working with Mozilla Hubs in the past. With some of our Meetup pieces. Is we can actually work with the source code.

So yes, I totally agree with that being really important for the future, with a lot of the accessibility that needs to come in these other platforms. Let's take one last question. And our last question, which... You've shown us a lot of them in today's presentation. But do you have a list of all... Or a wiki of... Or document of all the accessible design choices that you've made, sort of in this work? For designers to reference? Is there any other pulled-together link of all the work that you all have done to reference? ALICE: That would be really cool to have. But no, we don't have that. Again, because pretty much everything has to be personalized for each individual. A person who types with their feet is going to have different needs than a person who types with a head wand or who types by

gazing at an onscreen keyboard with their eye tracker. So it's all very individualized.