XR Accessibility

The question

Accessible XR is usually framed as adding a feature. Our evidence points somewhere else: what people need is control over the configuration. No single layout or interaction pattern serves everyone, and the arrangement that helps one person is often the one that gets in another’s way. The community is what matters, and in our research we always concentrate on Charlton’s principle: “Nothing About Us Without Us.”

How we work

An example of how we work in accessibility is a CHI 2026 paper that received an Honorable Mention (top 5%). We work with the community whose interaction is being designed, and in many cases the researchers or designers are themselves members of that community. In the ACM CHI paper, twelve Deaf signers viewed an ASL computer-science lecture under three signer placements. Putting signer and content in the same view reduced reported attention switching, eye fatigue, and pausing compared with their usual remote classes. Every layout still traded something — proximity against occlusion, clarity against gaze switching — and all twelve valued being able to choose. Please read the paper (opens in new tab) for more information.

What this work enables

Our accessibility work hopes to continue to enable extended reality experiences accessible to each community.