Ideas for A11y Programs in XR Tech Companies | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap

BILL: Hi, everyone. Bill Curtis-Davidson here. I'm really excited to be here today, to speak about ideas for accessibility programs in XR companies. And again, as I started to say a moment ago, I'm speaking with experience from recent roles that I played at Magic Leap, which was their accessibility leader.

And I've been doing a lot of work with many of you, actually, in the room. And online. In the XR access community initiative. Which we'll talk a little bit more about.

During this session. And I am excited to mention that I will be taking on a new role in July. I begin work as an emerging tech accessibility leader with the Wheelhouse Group. And this is gonna be in support of the US Department of Labor's partnership for employment and accessible technology, known as PEAT.

Future work initiative. And that group has been helping lead the XR accessibility initiative. So I'm really, really excited to be joining that effort. And continuing all of the work that our community is involved in, in this area of XR accessibility.

As well as other areas like AI. With that, let's see. We'll begin the presentation. I first wanted to pause and sort of recognize the moment that we're in here.

I'm coming to you from Atlanta, where I live. Atlanta, Georgia, in the US. And certainly we've been in the news, as well as other places around the world. Where there's been really a lot happening in social justice.

And people -- Black people, who are demanding social justice. And police violence. And other situations that are happening in our world. And this has personally affected people in my family.

So I just wanted to pause and recognize that this moment is an interesting moment that we're in. In that we're having our global pandemic. Which is disproportionately affecting Black and Brown Americans. And also, this pandemic has reminded us how important technologies are.

For all of us to stay connected. And that accessibility of technologies is obviously a very important topic that we've been discussing in the industry. Many of you have been a part of that discussion. And with this confluence of events, I'm reminded of how important accessible technology is.

But more importantly, that empathy alone is not enough, and that we need to remember that when we're designing technology, we're not designing for others. But we need to design by -- the technologies need to be designed by and with people with lived experience. And that we need to offer authentic inclusion in our approaches to designing technology and be ethical in design and consider areas of intersectionality. So I just want to kind of point that out, and I'm providing some resources at the end of this presentation.

Such as this wonderful Fast Company article. By Woodrow Winchester III, that I would like to suggest you look at. And with that, again, design is not about expressing ourselves. Or following dreams.

Or really becoming creative. As we're reminded by Mike Montiero, author of Ruined By Design, it's really about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people. Or causing problems in our society. And this is something that I've been very thoughtful about.

My whole career. Being a person working in a cause of inclusive design and accessibility. And just also being someone that values diversity in general. So just a couple of framing comments, before we get started.

And I'll touch today on some ideas that really center around how organizations leverage their diversity and inclusion efforts. And here I have a quote by Liz and Molly. Well known inclusion advocates. That diversity is about having a seat at the table.

Inclusion is about having a voice. And belonging is making sure that that voice is heard. So this is just sort of a frame of reference, as we proceed through some of these ideas. I just wanted to share with you this evening.

So against that backdrop, I'd like to shift and speak about some important accessible initiatives that are happening in the industry.

BILL: There are a number of different industry initiatives underway. And I first wanted to start out really talking about these ideas for programs inside organizations really against the backdrop of what's happening in the industry. And so I'm gonna share here just some information that may be new to some of you about efforts that are underway right now. First, the XR Access Initiative is a community-wide effort involving persons with disabilities, advocacy organizations, manufacturers, developers, and researchers.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Again, I'm playing a role in that effort. Many of you are as well. So we'll talk a little bit more about it in a moment.

The world wide web Consortium Accessibility Initiative has a number of working or community groups who are also exploring requirements and practices for XR accessibility-related topics. These include areas like immersive web, captions, media, realtime communications, and remote meetings. So there's quite a bit of work going on there that's very, very valuable and interesting. And note that those initiatives follow the W3C process to ensure that they have broad community input and consensus development of the guidelines, technical specs, and resources that will result from them.

As well, the XR Association is another group that's doing important work. Their mission is to promote responsible development and thoughtful advancement of XR for positive societal outcomes. And they're developing a primer that included some accessibility considerations, and they're part of the conversation as well. In addition, the XRSI or XR Safety Initiative, Cyber-XR Coalition, brings together diversity and inclusion-focused organizations.

And they're really doing some important work to advance the topic of accessibility in immersive technology, as well as inclusion ethics and safety. Very interesting work. And then finally the XR Collaboration Initiative just published a global resource guide to XR Collaboration, using AR, VR, and mixed reality. And we had contributions to that guide from fellow colleague Dylan Fox, from the XR Access Initiative.

And I believe Dylan is participating tonight, I think. And then finally, there's a lot going on in the education and learning space. Active dialogue happening with groups like Educators in VR and XR in Learning. And as you can see, there's a lot going on here.

A lot of momentum. More than in recent years. And it's just really great to see how much is happening, but it's also a space where these efforts are going through their processes, their very different processes, and I think it's a really critical time for all of us to be talking as much as possible. So I'm really excited that we're doing these types of events that Thomas and others are organizing.

I mentioned the XR Access Community Initiative that I'm one of many leaders in. This is an effort that was launched in July of 2019. Cornell Tech and Verizon Media were the inaugural sponsors of this, and continue to be sponsoring this important effort that involves over 140 cross sector participants. There are persons with disabilities involved at all levels of this effort.

And we also have great participation from a blend of device and platform manufacturers, as well as associations such as the ones I just mentioned. Government educators, researchers, and developers. And this initiative is being managed with support from the US Department of Labor PEAT Initiative, which I'm about to take a role in. And there's some research, education, and working groups in place.

And really what we're trying to do is gather user needs. That's the main focus right now. As well as existing practices. And it's important as well that we try to connect with the different efforts that are underway, such as the ones on the previous screen, as well as ones -- other ones that were too numerous to mention.

So I do want to mention that there is a symposium scheduled for July 20th and 21st. It is a free all-virtual symposium. So please consider if you might like to attend the symposium, and you can do so by going to www.xraccess.org/symposium. Before moving into the ideas, I want to just mention as well: Many XR companies fall into the startup category.

Including a very well funded but large startup I just worked for, Magic Leap. And there's some really excellent advice that was provided by last year in a great article by Accessibility Leader Sherri Burn Haber. And she mentioned that accessibility can help startups tap into a larger market, presenting more of a dynamic opportunity. Second, because accessibility requires collaboration, putting in place an accessibility program can help your team gain execution capability.

Third and fourth, the accessibility effort can help your startup gain commercial traction, and be more relevant to investors. I've often said in my work that accessibility is kind of a grown-up topic. Right? If you're a startup, and you want to be successful in enterprise or consumer markets, accessibility really is not an option.

Beyond a certain phase. It's really required. And so that's something to keep in mind, if you really have aspirations to be successful, which all of us do. So that's something to keep in mind.

And then finally, designing for inclusion of people with disabilities -- and really other groups as well, that we might consider marginalized or excluded -- can help a company innovate. It can be the X Factor. And Sherri described this much better than I'm doing right now, in her article. So please check it out.

So let's move right into the heart of the discussion. So ideas for programs. So here I'm gonna share just some areas that you might want to think about as you're developing your program. I do want to briefly mention that these ideas are related to categories that I've employed from an upcoming playbook that is going to be published by PEAT in the coming months.

And it's gonna be a playbook -- accessibility playbook for emerging technologies that's being developed. And I encourage you to be on the lookout for that, in case you find some of these topics interesting. You can get a lot more detail and valuable ideas for how to move your initiatives forward. The first idea I'm gonna cover is how to capture a vision.

As you pursue your XR tech accessibility program, we really need to start with a vision that's gonna serve as a guide post through the stages of your effort. It's important that that vision be inspirational, and reflect a commitment to accessibility, and reveal what you ultimately hope to accomplish. And you can consider aspects of your organization's culture, product, service, or the ecosystem that you plan to serve. Here's an example vision statement from Magic Leap.

This was a vision statement, a commitment, that states the company's high level commitment to accessibility. And I'll just read that. Magic Leap believes that accessibility is essential to delivering on our mission to harmonize people and technology to create a better, more unified world. We aim to design our platform, products, and services so people of various ages and ability levels may experience, use, and enjoy them, resulting in a sense of belonging.

And I do want to note that that last part is the goal. Right? The sense of belonging. That when we use these technologies, we don't get the sense they were designed for other people, but they were designed for us.

They're flexible enough to be used by different kinds of people. Different ages. Different abilities. Idea number two.

Having guiding principles. Guiding principles drive the value system of your initiative and help direct your decision making. They're really guide posts for you, as you pursue development of your program over time. I recommend organizations think about how being inclusive, intersectional, integrative, innovative, and imperfect as well, while developing your guidelines, and I'm gonna show you a couple here that you can consider.

So the first one should be on everyone's list, which is co-design with people with disabilities. People with disabilities are the ones that have the lived experience. And we need to all work together. So that we understand how what we design can be used by people in different ways.

So that's the first guide post there. It's also important -- and this will differ depending on the scale of your organization. But at Magic Leap, we were leveraging intersectionality. And I'm showing a photo here from a remarkable workshop that was held with diverse leaders.

Representing various areas of diversity. We had Women's Inclusion Network. We had our Accessibility and Disability Network. As well as Blacks at ML, Veterans, and LGBTQ, to name the main ones.

And we were really exploring intersectionality, which helped us think of ways to align for better product design. Engaging the ecosystem is something that is really critical. As you saw a moment ago, there's a lot happening in the ecosystem. And really, you need to remember not to be insular.

Or at least, that's my advice. Get involved in efforts that are going on, because there's a lot happening. And all of it is really in flux. And it will be beneficial to be engaged in the ecosystem.

As you're proceeding. Baking into existing processes -- this is something we all talk about in accessibility program leadership and strategy. Is to make sure that we're baking accessibility into the process. As far into the process as design and testing.

And making sure that is an integral part of the way we operate. Monitoring progress and quality in companies that aspire to move into different markets. Countries. And also industries like health care.

It's really important to have quality systems, and make sure that accessibility is integrated into that. And then mainly, as well, lastly, virtuous feedback cycle. Making sure that there's a feedback loop from the very beginning of your system, through what you're doing with your products and your process, and being able to get feedback once your products or services are released. And making sure you have a virtuous cycle there.

That includes the voice of the customer with disabilities. Some thoughts on structuring your program. After defining your vision and guiding principles. You really need to think about structuring programs, and really, these are about areas like -- what areas you will focus on.

Teams, priorities, timing, and more. Some key ingredients to structuring a program -- and again, this will differ, if you're in a company that's 20 people, versus 1,000. It will differ. But the principle is kind of the same.

In that thinking about accountability -- first there needs to be someone on point for accessibility, that will set vision and determine what the organization should be working on. How to work across the organization. And again, that could be in an organization of 20 people. Or 1,000.

Also, there needs to be accountability across departments. Ensuring accessibility is prioritized in relation to the other priorities of the business. Making trade-offs and avoiding blame. And ownership by all employees -- I think all of us probably are aware that accessibility is a shared responsibility.

And there are many decisions that are made every day, that affect accessibility. So there needs to be some kind of empowerment of everyone. And I'll talk about ways to do that in a moment. Here I'm showing an idea for organization.

So in order to make accountability happen, an organization has to be defined for your program. And again, this will be different in scale, in smaller versus larger organizations. Or organizations that are different types of organizations. Such as a platform manufacturer, versus a content developer.

Or immersive video company, versus another kind of company. Slightly different variations. However, the needs for some accessibility -- central accessibility program -- that works together with the units to distribute responsibilities -- is a common need. When defining an organization.

And this central program can help maximize the user base. Comply with global laws. Or relevant laws to the market that you're doing business in. Help with overall innovation strategies.

And spurring sales and presenting a positive image. Where possible. Making sure there's a positive impact to the momentum developed through a program. And I mentioned Employee Resource Groups a couple of times already, in the context of diversity and inclusion, and how we use those teams to engender in our organizations true respect for inclusion and operational reality.

So these efforts, in my view, whether we look at what's been done by leaders such as Microsoft, or other companies such as that, Google, Microsoft, IBM, many other companies have successfully leveraged their Employee Resource Groups to advance inclusive design and promote cultural understanding. And to grow champions. Groom champions inside and outside the company. Relationships with volunteering.

Giveback. And other areas. As well as employee development. Here's an example rounding out the section on structuring your initiative on activities.

So we think about the organization. We think about the activities. And here I'm showing three buckets of activity. One is about product.

How do you design your product? And consider the voice of the customer? As well as implementing inclusive design in a way that makes sense in your organization. Where you can involve persons with disabilities in some form or fashion.

You can develop market and product requirements and integrate them through some kind of life cycle, as well as looking at customer care and other areas. And on the program compliance side, there's a set of activities that must be done really to make sure there's communication in the organization. As well as role-based training and learning. Managing the champions and employee resource group approach, as well as monitoring quality and keeping records of the activities, which may be required for compliance or regulatory, as well as other activities.

And the ecosystem -- again, I mentioned, as a principle, get involved in the ecosystem. All these initiatives that are going on. In this way, you can engage the disability community more than maybe you can inside your company, depending on your situation. And you can also partner and collaborate in ways that will help you advance your work in this area.

And you can participate, of course, in sessions like what we're doing right now. In order to be successful, it is important to map out your stakeholders. Since work will not be done in a vacuum. And here I'm showing an example of a high level categorization of stakeholders.

This will help as you're developing your program. Make sure that you have a relative understanding of the groups that you're working with, and how they relate to each other. What their relative priorities are. So I'm showing here groups such as market research, product development, legal compliance and quality, engineering, if your company develops first party apps or content, that is a potential stakeholder group.

As well as any partners you may be aligned with as you're bringing your XR technology to market. And of course, the third party ecosystem could be a factor, depending on what kind of work your organization does and what products or offerings it has. As well as marketing, sales, customer support. These are all areas that people who lead accessibility initiatives in larger or smaller companies must address and be related to these stakeholder groups.

As the organization is being put in place, crafting messages are really important to build momentum. You'll need these to not only communicate at the beginning of your initiative, but also as you proceed through it. So that you can spark curiosity and inspire action. And variations of this will appear both inside and outside the company.

Here I'm showing an example that I've used in recent months. Where I'm showing really a message of inclusive design in the context of XR. Really how inclusive design and considering accessibility can help ensure that all people can use XR tech for a variety of purposes. I'm showing four columns here.

That touch on areas of functional access needs. Like moving, touching, dexterity or mobility, hearing, speaking, observing, thinking, and learning. And what I'm showing as well below each of those columns is three rows highlighting people, activities, and environments. And when we think about people, and we think about constraints with moving or touching, this could be informed by the lived experience and value that can be provided by persons with disabilities, who are engaged in co-design or leading design.

Such as people who are using a wheelchair, cane, or prosthetic. And that can help unlock ideas for how to use technology when you're in the stationary or hands-busy position, as well as in a smaller or tighter space. When we go through hearing and speaking, similarly, when we leverage the value and experience of people with disabilities, such as Deaf or hard of hearing colleagues, we can unlock possibilities of designing technology that will be useful when you're in the speaking or ears-busy or loud or quiet environments.

So if your technology is being used in these different environments or activities, again, we can use the lever of the lived experience, valuable experience of people with disabilities, to help us have a lens for innovation. And similarly with seeing and observing, thinking and learning. Leveraging the perspective of people with disabilities against these backdrops of other activities and environments. Where functional, sensory, or physical limitations exist in using technology.

Other messages. I will say accessibility messages are really most effective when they're coupled with actual experiences. Where employees can engage with people with disabilities, and also consider the meaning of these messages in real life. With real people.

And one of the goals that I had as the leader of accessibility at Magic Leap was to really create these moments where we were working together with our partners, such as the Dan Merino Foundation, or with other independent developers who were part of our creator ecosystem. As well as our internal employees with disabilities. Many of whom had invisible disabilities that became evident as we learned more about each other, and what we were -- the awesome tasks that we were undertaking and designing for spatial computing.

I recall having a very substantive group of colorblind employees present themselves, when we were working on certain vision challenges. And again, numerous examples. I'm showing some here, where we see people visiting the Dan Marino Foundation to provide outreach, and also to meet people, young adults, with autism, and learn how they're using technology and how it's helping them or maybe some barriers that need to be addressed. And I'm also showing -- I see Roland is here.

I think I'm showing Roland on the screen here, as well as other folks in our XR Access Community. And I've really been delighted to work with all of you, and to also more importantly share these experiences with an ever-expanding group of people, so that we can all learn from each other. Finally, building your community. So I just touched on a number of different areas, from organizations setting up activities and having guide posts -- but really, it's important to have a way to build the community organically.

And this is really one of the most challenging aspects of accessibility programs. In that many of in roles such as what I perform, we get burned out. We're looked at as the expert, and there's a couple of other people in this department or that department, and it becomes very challenging to grow expertise and really to be effective. You need to build a community of people that are committed and knowledgeable.

About inclusion and accessibility. In order to grow to scale. And I want to give a shout out to Ted Drake at Intuit. Exemplar in our community who has published and graciously offered details of their Accessibility Champions program.

I know other Champions programs exist, such as at LinkedIn, with Jennison Ascension and his team. These are been greatly effective, and I've been lucky enough to get details about them as I was working on our program at Magic Leap, and just advising numerous clients over the years. And this one really -- what happens in these programs is there's a way to have a low barrier of entry to become what we would call a level one accessibility champion.

By really understanding what is accessibility. And understanding that on a personal level, by having experiences with people with disabilities, and going through a sequence of activities that engender in the employee, in the learner, a real passion and interest in the topic. And again, low barrier of entry. The program is designed such that individuals can level up their ambition, and receive rewards like educational opportunities.

Recognition by line management. And even senior leadership. And have multiple opportunities to learn and grow. Both inside the company as well as externally.

In giving presentations. Like the one I'm giving right now. So thanks, Ted, for your leadership, and others like you, who have really done a great job with these types of efforts that make a difference. Getting to work.

We're almost done, Thomas. So I want to try to stay close to time. Lastly, I wanted to just point out some examples. You get all these pieces together, and then: How do you bring it all together and get to work, right?

You're identifying projects. And obviously accessibility is never done. Technology in our space, in XR, is constantly evolving. There are always new challenges coming into play, with new capabilities.

I find that very refreshing. It's also frightening at times. But it's very refreshing for me, and I enjoy the challenge of all of it. But it really does become a challenge where to start.

Right? So I'm just gonna point out a few areas, just as an example, of areas that at least I pursued in recent work. As we develop our community inside a company, corralling around different areas. Here I'm showing some of those areas that really -- there was a lot of progress made in.

And they're very critical. And you can see work happening across the board in VR and AR and other areas. Areas like inputs. Multimodal embodied inputs.

As well as controls, presentation, and output. And I'm showing here various inputs such as eye gaze, head pose, voice, and using accessories, like a six degrees of freedom controller, as well as a mobile companion app, and an attached Bluetooth keyboard or other Bluetooth device. And I know there was a great session just given in the last, I believe, one of the last presentations. In this Meetup.

On inputs. And as well, outputs like having captioning. And media streams. This is an area of work that's underway.

In the industry. And one that's really important. And again, I mentioned the W3C captioning community group effort that's being led by people like Chris Patanow of Google. And collaboration with the XR Access Initiative.

So if you're in that area, again, there's something for everyone in these different initiatives that you should tap into the expertise. I'm also showing here some content or developer ecosystem accessibility. Here are some examples from Magic Leap that I was delighted to partner with people on. And they include the Dan Marino Foundation work in autism and mixed reality applications, to promote social skills development.

Especially for employment and other important life events. Bad VR. See Signal Styler, an app that visualizes the signal strength of network signals through spaces. And this had -- we had a wonderful session with Suzanne, the CEO of Bad VR, they're based in California, where she shared -- and she has a Medium post about this -- where she shared information about how she designed this to consider colorblind.

Because color is used in the application quite significantly for data visualization. So some great work going on, novel work. As well as the work from our Magic Leap Studios, such as with Dr. Gorbortz Invaders.

And I'm showing here captioning. Spatial captioning that was implemented in that update. To the initial version of that game. So some great examples of getting in there and making the work happen in increments over time.

It's a journey, and you've got to start somewhere working in areas that will have the most impact and provide examples of what's possible for accessibility. Constantly validating as well. So with that, I want to say thank you. I think I'm generally on time.

And my handle at Twitter is @bCurtisDavidson. With a D. Davidson. And you can reach me at [email protected] as well.

I'm gonna just advance the slides. As we provide these slides out, I'll make sure that those are available -- that we have these resources. Some of which I've touched on this evening. So with that, I guess Thomas, we can turn it over to questions.

THOMAS: Yeah. So thank you very much for the great presentation. We're gonna take ten minutes of questions here on the stream. And then after that ten minutes, feel free to stick around, and we can have some conversations in the room.

But yeah. Let's open up the floor. If anyone has a question, if you could unmute your mic... And ask it...

Or type it in the chat. That would be great.

BILL: I see Alexander from BeMyEyes is here. Alexander, thanks for your comment. I don't know if everyone knows BeMyEyes, but they do great work in helping people with low vision. And definitely check them out.

So you can understand what services they provide. With their work.

THOMAS: There was a comment on the stream. Might be something that you know about. But they mentioned: It's sad not to see VR, ARA, and AWB on the list of initiatives for accessibility. I think there needs to be a bigger push for accessibility in these VR/AR conferences.

Do you know if there is any work in that space?

BILL: I think that's something definitely we should all discuss. The interesting thing about -- and I'll include myself in this -- is that many of us come at this from a varied perspective. We've been in different parts of accessibility. And we're not always deeply integrated into the different conferences and activities that are underway.

And we definitely want to make sure that we're collaborating as best as possible. And definitely I've noticed -- obviously presentations happening at those different events. And I would definitely welcome folks reaching out so that we can, again, continue to combine our activities, or at least be aware of them. So that we can all benefit from them.

THOMAS: I'll put in a question for -- oh, go ahead, Dylan.

Okay. I was just gonna ask: What do you think? Until we can get some of these really big platforms on board, and make things available at a system platform level, what would you say is the best way for individual developers to kind of collaborate and take advantage of one another's work? That's been done already, towards accessibility?

BILL: That's a great question, Dylan. I think that -- you know, it really depends on what kind of organization you are. I see a lot of work going on that's research projects. Right?

Partnering with universities to kind of sort of test out different approaches. And then also, there's bits of work happening, right? In different spaces. Like, if you're in a company that works a lot with media, there's obviously some more concrete activities happening in some of these areas.

Like in the captioning work happening across the board. So it is a challenging time to figure out the right way to operate. But I do think the most important thing is to get involved with people with disabilities. And I think that's one benefit of participating in communities like XR Access and others as well.

XR and Learning, Educators in VR, is to really get connected to that, so we can begin to understand user needs more fully. I know this is something we were trying to work on in our initiative, which, Dylan, you're a part of. And all of that is really important, in order to help the platforms evolve their capabilities. So we're still in a state where we need more research, more engagement of persons with disabilities, so that we can really understand what's beneficial in these different types of applications.

I have a quick question. Can you guys hear me?

BILL: Yes.

All right. So I've been observing everything that is kind of related to the XR space accessibility efforts, very much tied to the gamification, game space. AbleGamers. There's one example that understands how to bring accessibility to game mechanics.

But XR is also for telepresence and industrial applications are very important. Now that -- like, I'm wondering if there's any kind of efforts -- things out there, readable documents, that showcase that early adopters of XR in industrial spaces like, let's say, telemedicine, not only entertainment like the video streaming and captioning, or the gaming -- the Oculus Quest games that are now attending to more accessibility needs, but real heavy-duty industrial applications that are not for the commoner, but just really in the niche industries.

If there's any kind of accessibility research or implementation and if there is anything in that space, where can it be found? Or are they all borrowing from the gamification aspect?

BILL: Yeah. That's a great question. I'm not aware of studies. But I could just not be aware of them.

This is one of the things that I hope we can do with our XR Access Initiative. Is to really highlight any of these studies, and begin to categorize them in ways that make sense. So if you're working in enterprise training-type contexts for your products or applications, it would be helpful if we had relevant material. I think right now it's really difficult to find material.

We do have great experiences to draw from for gaming. And I know that the people I've worked with, such as the Magic Leap Studios, or other areas, working with Able Gamers, looking at the great work that they and others have done, and the papers that have been written have been really valuable -- I think we're just constantly inflecting this through the lens of what's possible with spatial or XR computing. Right? Because it does -- on the one hand, you can apply concepts and examples of what's been done.

It really will require more exploration for the unique traits of XR. But I would like to encourage more focused studies in industries or in specific application areas. Because I think that would help move us along in refining understanding of what it means to be accessible. With different kinds of applications.

THOMAS: A good question I had from Nicholas Pere -- are you aware of ways to get investment or sponsorship for companies that want to do more work in the accessibility field? Funding?

BILL: I'm trying to understand the question. From what context are you asking, Nicholas?

Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

THOMAS: It's a startup like a hardware controller. But I think like grants, or places where funding... Could be available for -- if you're working on a technology that could help people with disabilities in XR.

BILL: I'm not sure I have anything right off the bat for that. I could look into that. I'm gonna take a note of some of these questions. And on that note, I would be glad to follow up with any of you.

If there are questions like this. That I'm not able to answer.

THOMAS: I'll take one more question. We had one more question on our chat. We'll do more of those after the stream. But how can academia collaborate with the industry to build accessible XR tech?

That's the last question.

BILL: Great question. There are a lot of academic -- or institutions of higher learning, research institutions, that are doing important work, and what I would like to say is: I think that there's really an important amount of work that needs to be done really in platforms. Some of the work that's been done by Cornell Tech, for example, Dr. Shiri Azenco, who's really the co-founder of this XR Access Initiative, and her team, working, for example, with Microsoft to look at ways to improve low vision access right in the platform, have been really important.

And I think while we can look at university-based research that's really aligned to specific use cases, or assistive technologies and other areas, even the work with Dan Merino, for example, I showed, and other work like it, coming out of universities, is aligned more to like -- assistive tech. But I would like to encourage more universities to try to look at ways to partner with industry. So that we can get really good research projects underway, that would be able to advance platform accessibility, or show what users need and what's valuable in the way that the example I gave provided the example from Microsoft and partnership with Cornell Tech.

And those are some things that we want to discuss more, as part of XR Access, in the symposium. That I mentioned. We're actually gonna have a breakout. On relationship with higher ed.

And that breakout could involve some of those types of discussions. You know. What's valuable in terms of partnering with universities for concrete user needs research. As well as teaching and learning in this space.

THOMAS: Thank you so much, Bill. Really appreciate having you come talk to us today. We will be hanging out in this room afterwards, and we can have some chats. I wanted to acknowledge and thank again our captioner, Mirabai Knight from White Coat Captioning, who has been captioning the whole event tonight.

And I want to thank Joly MacFie from the Internet Society of New York, who has been producing the stream that's going out to YouTube, which a lot of people were on the YouTube stream today -- so again, I appreciate everyone coming today. Again, I'm Thomas Logan from Equal Entry. We'll be having another event at this time in one month. And we have an event that's better for European time zones coming up in two weeks.

So thank you everyone. We'll be ending the stream now. And I'll invite everyone from the YouTube stream to come back and chat as well. Thank you, everyone.