What does a rave, a cockroach and a Yeti have in common…in VR?
Recently I managed to secure a ticket for the recent Fatboy Slim VR experience via the EngageVR platform. A number people have already commented on their experience (a lot along the lines of “…with VR experiences like this who needs drugs”) not a lot have mentioned the accessibility of the experience.
Kudos to EngageVR for providing detailed instructions on how to get the most out of the experience before the event. These instructions covered everything from how to use your controls (Windows, Mac, VR and Xbox controllers) to what to experience. However there were two aspects missing that I was disappointed by:
- Lack of captioning
- Lack of screen reader support
Whilst it was a auditory and visual event that doesn’t mean captioning and screen reader support should be ignored. Throughout the experience participants interacted with each other but only through speech. There was certainly enough lower frequencies to feel the experience although I didn’t get the full depth of this as it was way too early for everyone else in the house.
If you were reliant on screen reader support to experience the event there didn’t appear to be anything: even the log in screen was not keyboard accessible if I’d wanted to experience the event from my PC. At least this was the case when I subsequently tried via the desktop app and via Steam.
If VR platforms are seriously looking at how to make events such as these more marketable and more accessible to everyone they need to look at what they are baking into their solution.
