Understanding VR Accessibility Practices of VR Professionals

Accessibility is a crucial concept in Virtual Reality (VR), pivotal for meeting the needs of users, including those with disabilities.In recent years, there has been an increasing focus of VR products on enhancing the accessibility of a diverse range of digital content.Despite this growing attention from the VR community, there is a serious lack of empirical research on how VR practitioners consider VR accessibility.This includes their understanding of and insights into VR accessibility challenges and practices in the VR software development life cycle.In this paper, we aim to address these gaps using a mixed-methods approach.Specifically, we conducted interviews with 21 VR practitioners (incl.3D modelers, developers, technical directors, and product managers) and surveyed 202 VR practitioner respondents from VR-related industries.Our findings outline the insights and challenges they face concerning VR accessibility practices in the software development life cycle.Furthermore, our findings shed light on the challenges faced by practitioners concerning VR accessibility and the reasons why it often goes unconsidered.As far as we know, this is the first comprehensive report about the understanding of accessibility in the VR software development life cycle from practitioners' perspectives.We hope this paper will help VR practitioners better understand the practices, challenges, and potential solutions related to VR accessibility.