Virtual reality is a visual medium. Because of this, you may be surprised to learn that there are many low vision and blind people who enjoy virtual reality. One of those people is Shane Kehoe, a Community Talent Manager at Fable, who leads training teams and designs accessibility testing scenarios.
To find out just how accessible the Meta Quest 2 headset is, our Equal Entry team worked with Shane. While Meta has accessibility guidelines for virtual reality, they serve as an early draft. Besides, some areas of accessibility are missing. Fortunately, Shane could use his expertise and personal experience to show where the Meta Quest 2 interface needs improvement.
Remote User Testing
Fable excels at providing user testing by people with disabilities for a variety of apps and interfaces. Our Equal Entry team was excited to work with Shane. We connected with Shane on Zoom to do remote testing. It made it possible for Shane to show us everything he saw through his screen. As we worked through the experience, we documented the issues we encountered in this work.
The technology to do remote testing for virtual reality is still in the early stages. Nonetheless, it delighted us to get involved in the early stage and we’ll continue to document and advocate for making this process easier. It’s important to simplify the process to ensure that the voices of people with disabilities are heard during the development and design of virtual reality technologies.
Video
Watch Shane do his accessibility tests on the Meta Quest 2 in this subtitled video.
Transcript: User Testing the Meta Quest 2 with Low Vision
Hey, I’m Shane from Fable, and today I was asked to do a test on the Oculus. And I am considered… I am legally blind, and my sight is very blurry. It’s almost like being underwater.
And blind spots throughout. I use magnification ideally for my purposes. In fact, it was so difficult to set up from the beginning. I had to get my wife to help me.
So she had to, you know, set up everything right from the beginning and follow instructions that came in the box, which I couldn’t see. The buttons on this are great, I think the… I guess they’re called joysticks, they’re great as well. But, yeah, accessibility-wise, for my purposes, I just found it very difficult setting it up.
This is very cool, but I think it has some work to do with its accessibility. And now I’m going to put on the Quest and give you a demonstration of my experience using the Quest. So I’m going to bring up the menu here in Oculus, and it’s kind of small but I actually do have it set on the largest setting within the accessibility settings. However, what is very cool is I am going to walk towards the menu, and as I walk it does get larger for me.
So I’m going to take one step, two steps, and my third step that I start taking, it kind of whites out and disappears. And I can’t really see it because it’s all whited out. However, I’m going to back up just a little bit, and I can see ... see it a lot better.
It’s still a little fuzzy and small for me, but I can make some out, and I’m going to try to read everything that’s on the screen. And I’m going to start from the top. This one here, I believe it says Apps. And this one I believe is Recent.
This one here is All and it might be a dropdown, I’m pretty sure. This one here, I have no idea what it is. The contrast is, to me, very bad. It’s like a light color, I'm not sure if it’s white on a light blue or green or something, I can’t tell.
Over here, I’m not sure what this one is either. This one here is TV, this contrast is much better. This one here is Prime Video, the contrast on it is much better as well. This one is YouTube.
Even though it’s a white background and dark letters on the front, the contrast is much better. So I’m going to go into the Settings and I’m going to show the accessibility settings that Oculus has to offer. And I’m going to select Settings. And I’m going to walk in to see as much as I can to try and find accessibility.
I believe that’s it right there. Select it. And it looks like it has Vision and Mobility settings. It’s hard for me to see them at the moment.
They’re still too small for me even though I have the settings set at the largest possible setting. And right here is the Text Size, and I believe it says Largest but I can’t really see it. If I select this, you can see the different settings. And ...
what is this? Color Correction. This does have a few different color corrections. And I’m thinking this is to change the colors for different settings.
So that’s the menu there. I’m going to turn it off. Again, it doesn’t do anything for my eyes but it might for somebody else. And then over here there’s also the Mobility settings as well.
And I will go back. So it does have a couple of settings, however, it is limited. I would like to see it much larger, have the option of making the screen oh sorry, the print in menus much larger. However, it doesn’t have that option.
Another option that would be nice is color inversion on the menus if possible. Right now it’s almost like a dark mode so it’s not too bad for me, meaning the background of the menu itself is darker than the print. So it’s not too bad. For me, it’d be much nicer if it was a lot darker.
And then the print white like it is. And again, much larger.
Onboarding
Shane discovered obstacles to using the headset from the start. “It was so difficult to set up from the beginning,” he said. “I had to get my wife to help me.”
While there is accessibility available on the Meta Quest 2, it’s not available out of the box. In fact, the box contains written instructions that Shane cannot see. This means that Shane and others like him need to have someone else set up their virtual reality headset before they can use it themselves.
This is similar to how Windows devices and iPhones used to be. We believe the onboarding process must always be accessible. Meta can learn how to achieve this from older technologies like Windows and iOS.
Text Size of the Menus
Once the headset was ready, Shane tried it out. Right away, he discovered a big problem. Even with the main menu text set to the largest possible size, the text was still too small for him to read comfortably. Walking closer to the menu made the text appear larger, which helped.
However, not all users will have the mobility to do this. Shane appreciated the ability to resize text through physical movement. Still, when he got too close to the menus, a white overlay appeared that made all of the text unreadable.
Meta needs to remove this white overlay to improve the reading experience for low vision users who want to get closer to the text.
Color Contrast
In the interface, menu items are displayed with a variety of color contrast patterns. This makes some of the items much easier to read than others. Shane had a hard time reading light-colored text on light-colored backgrounds. In some cases, he couldn’t read them at all.
He could better read light text on dark backgrounds. Shane noted that the available color correction options in the Vision settings menu could be beneficial for some users. In his case, they would not benefit him. He would prefer the ability to darken the background, perhaps invert the colors, and make the text size much larger.
Virtual Reality Accessibility Needs More Work
If an accessibility expert had this much trouble navigating the Meta Quest 2 interface, how well will an everyday user fare? This is especially the case if they have a vision disability. Accessibility in virtual reality is starting to get the attention it deserves from headset manufacturers. But as Shane’s testing revealed, they have a long way to go.
Here’s a valuable article from MIT on inclusive user testing in VR. You might also want to check out Virtual Reality in the Dark: VR Development for People Who Are Blind.
Note: This article was created using Oculus Quest Build 35.0
Virtual Reality (VR) Accessibility Consulting Services
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