About the Project

In recent years, virtual realities (VR - Virtual Reality) have developed significantly and are now used in the leisure sector and likewise in a professional context. This is because application-oriented training scenarios can be played out in VR when certain situations are associated with risks in reality. In addition, VR enables decentralized collaboration, where different people can work on content simultaneously in a shared virtual space without being on-site. Using this possibility of collaboration inclusively in a professional context is the subject of the InclusiveVR@Work project. While people with (severe) disabilities already regularly use VR applications, many barriers have not yet been systematically investigated in previous research, and there are no uniformly applicable solutions for them. In particular, there are still no approaches that shed more light on the collaboration of people with and without (severe) disabilities in VR.

Therefore, the goal of the InclusiveVR@Work project is to develop innovative working environments for people with severe visual impairment in VR that enable equal participation in working life in vocational training and further education. This is achieved through the individual adaptability of the work environment to the visual impairment, the integration of classic working tools, and the modeling of collaboration in which all members of a team can work together on a project in a virtual space on an equal basis, using their own view of the project content optimized to their individual vision and work technique. InclusiveVR@Work thus creates the prerequisite for inclusive collaboration in VR to become possible.