Disability inclusion in extended reality (XR) research: a critical scoping review

While extended reality (XR) technology—encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality—promises more inclusive futures for disabled people, it is contradictorily steeped in normative assumptions about their users’ embodiments. Supplementing a growing body of work critiquing the ideologies undergirding XR, this article attends to how XR research has understood disability inclusion. Informed by Mitchell and Snyder’s delineation of what constitutes the ‘meaningful inclusion’ of people with disability, we analyzed 45 documents concerned with disability inclusion in XR from a comprehensive search of two databases (January 2009–April 2024). Findings reveal that XR research lacks a common understanding of disability inclusion while predominantly invoking the concept in narrow and harmful ways incompatible with disability activism and scholarship. We advocate for agendas that understand disability inclusion in XR beyond normative boundaries and attend to developing XR spaces conceptualized for disabled corporealities.