Conducting VR User Studies with People with Vision/Hearing Impairments: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies

TL;DR

This paper addresses the lack of diversity in VR user studies, specifically the underrepresentation of participants with vision and hearing impairments. It synthesizes experience-based insights to identify five challenges—recruitment, language familiarity, technology limitations, access to audio cues, and travel—and prescribes concrete mitigation strategies for each, along with three considerations on participants' lived experiences. The contributions include actionable recruitment methods, communication accommodations, accessibility adaptations, and travel alternatives intended to improve inclusion and the generalisability of VR research. The work underscores the need for ongoing evaluation as technologies evolve to ensure ethical, accessible, and representative VR user studies with broader reach into diverse communities.

Abstract

There is a lack of virtual reality (VR) user studies that have been conducted involving people with vision/hearing impairments. This is due to the difficulty of recruiting participants and the accessibility barriers of VR devices. Based on the authors' experience conducting VR user studies with participants with vision/hearing impairments, this position paper identifies 5 key challenges (1. Recruitment, 2. Language Familiarity, 3. Technology Limitations and Barriers, 4. Access to Audio Cue, and 5. Travelling to the Experiment Location) and proposes strategic approaches to mitigate these challenges. In addition, we also presented three key considerations regarding understanding participants' lived experiences that could help the user study become accessible.