[New User Need] 4.20 Wayfinding - Review of XR Accessibility User Requirements COGA

[RealJoshue108]

Filed on behalf of COGA @lseeman / john Kirkwood / Dave Fazio (as a proposed addition)

User Need 20: Users with limited vision and spatial orientation impairments may have issues orienting and navigating.

REQ 20: Provide clear landmarks.clear landmarks either visual or audio landmarks to follow or to enable return to paths. Provide visual land marks. Mono audio sound to be sent to both headphones so that the user can perceive and navigate and remember the landscape and enable return paths.

[RealJoshue108]

Discussed by RQTF May 12th https://www.w3.org/2021/05/12-rqtf-minutes.html

[RealJoshue108]

@lseeman RQTF would like some more information on the use case for mono? Especially as a use case for low vision? Can you please clarify?

[RealJoshue108]

Adding @rainbreaw so she can track relevant issues

[Helixopp]

David Fazio says: There are many kinds of visual impairments. Many people are familiar with light perception as part of vision loss. People with traumatic brain injuries deal with visual processing difficulties. This can affect orientating themselves while navigating. Even if provided accurate directions, we may not recognize our surroundings, become overwhelmed with anxiety, possibly fear, and make a wrong decision to turn a different way. I speak from longstanding personal experience.

[Helixopp]

Stereo sound creates spatial experiences, which can disorient users with cognitive disabilities. It's not enough to require, or recommend "personalization". Nor is it enough to require or recommend a "mono" audio option. Designers need to understand why the need, and who it affects. This will help them determine how to categorize the feature and where in the hierarchy of the menu it will reside. Microsoft frequently mentions how few people used its accessibility features until it did research and found out they were just tucked away in less visible, or relevant spot. Then they moved it and use skyrocketed. If "mono" is an accessibility feature under a Hearing Impaired category, users with cognitive disabilities will likely not ever discover it

[joshueoconnor]

Thanks David for some clarification on the user need. So you are suggesting mono audio being sent to both head phones potentially as a preference for users with acquired brain injury. Would this be helpful?

[joshueoconnor]

Stereo sound creates spatial experiences, which can disorient users with cognitive disabilities.

Do you have any references to research on this?

[joshueoconnor]

. It's not enough to require, or recommend "personalization".

That is the beginning - then we need to be clear on what user need we aim to address, and then present requirements. So thats what we are trying to do.

[joshueoconnor]

If "mono" is an accessibility feature under a Hearing Impaired category, users with cognitive disabilities will likely not ever discover it

Understood - but that is an implementation detail. For this document if there is a genuine user need and requirement, we just need to clearly present that in the XAUR.

[RealJoshue108]

Discussed by Research Questions Task force https://www.w3.org/2021/06/23-rqtf-minutes.html

[RealJoshue108]

@Helixopp @rainbreaw I've added these edits to this branch, and Research Questions will review this week:

Relating to the mono option: https://raw.githack.com/w3c/apa/COGA-XR-input/xaur/index.html#mono-audio-option

and I've renamed 'Reset focus and orientation' to 'Orientation and Navigation' to broaden out the user need

https://raw.githack.com/w3c/apa/COGA-XR-input/xaur/index.html#orientation-and-navigation

I've also added Davids overview of the necessity for mono and it's important in spatial orientation, as I think that is helpful in this context.