How Well Can 3D Accessibility Guidelines Support XR Development? An Interview Study with XR Practitioners in Industry

TL;DR

This work presents the first evaluation of existing 3D a11y guidelines applied to XR development through semi-structured interviews with 25 XR practitioners across diverse organization contexts, and provides foundational insights towards developing a11y guidelines and support tools that address XR's distinct characteristics.

Abstract

While accessibility (a11y) guidelines exist for 3D games and virtual worlds, their applicability to extended reality (XR)'s unique interaction paradigms (e.g., spatial tracking, kinesthetic interactions) remains unexplored. XR practitioners need practical guidance to successfully implement a11y guidelines under real-world constraints. We present the first evaluation of existing 3D a11y guidelines applied to XR development through semi-structured interviews with 25 XR practitioners across diverse organization contexts. We assessed 20 commonly-agreed a11y guidelines from six major resources across visual, motor, cognitive, speech, and hearing domains, comparing practitioners' development practices against guideline applicability to XR. Our investigation reveals that guidelines can be highly effective when designed as transformation catalysts rather than compliance checklists, but fundamental mismatches exist between existing 3D guidelines and XR requirements, creating both implementation barriers and design gaps. This work provides foundational insights towards developing a11y guidelines and support tools that address XR's distinct characteristics.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Screenshots as shown to participants from the Game Accessibility Guidelines used as an anchor, showing Mot-1: Allow controls to be remapped / reconfigured as an example. We provided original wording (left) and visual examples (right) to participants and gave standardized explanations of each guideline via a slides presentation. Retrieved from mot1-gameguide.
• Figure 2: Mapping research questions addressed by our findings. RQ1 identified technical solutions, headset limitations, and training gaps. RQ2 revealed ambiguity in applying 3D guidelines to XR contexts and tensions between immersion and a11y. RQ3 showed practitioners need automated checking, concrete examples, and code-first support. Overall, practitioners are willing to implement a11y but need help balancing effort versus impact.
• Figure 3: We show an example from one of the most popular faric2019players VR games, Beat Saber beatsaber, which offers custom color settings for a variety of virtual objects. Selecting an object (Right) like notes, lights, or wall, then picking a color from the picker, will cause the respective virtual object to change to that color. Users can create up to four custom color palettes (Left, labeled Custom 0 through Custom 3) or choose from a variety of presets themed from in-game collections (e.g., "The First", "Origins"). As of November 2024 there do not exist built-in presets for common color vision deficiencies (e.g., protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia) colorblindnesstypes.