For XR developers, creating immersive experiences that captivate and retain a broad range of users is key. But one often overlooked aspect of achieving this is ensuring accessibility — making sure your experience is usable for all, including people with specific needs and a range of disabilities. This is where the XR Accessibility User Requirements — or “XAUR” — document, created by W3C’s Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group, plays a crucial role.
XAUR describes the needs of people with disabilities in virtual or immersive environments (XR). It includes requirements for XR to be accessible. XAUR is for designers and developers who are involved in creating XR experiences — W3C Web Accessibility Initiative news
User centered design, where the end users of your application or product are involved in every stage of development from ideation to launch, is always advisable in all forms of software or product development. This inclusive approach leads to more meaningful end products that are relevant to users, address their needs and also helps greatly in reducing any waste of time and resources during your project. That being said, it’s not always possible to get access to your target audience, and based on my own personal previous experiences in XR accessibility projects, getting access to disabled users for long periods of time is even harder. So what can we do? Abandon user requirements and risk developing experiences that are not relevant to our end users? Exclude users that may greatly benefit from XR just because we couldn’t share a table or a virtual call with them? Bin inclusive design altogether because it’s hard or expensive to do? Absolutely not because this is where the XAUR document comes in:
- All-in-one resource: XAUR condenses years and years of important XR accessibility knowledge and research into a single, authoritative source, which saves a ton of time compared to researching scattered industry or/and academic literature.
- A living artefact: while the XAUR can be considered “complete” at different points in time, I like to think of the XAUR as a living document that gets updated by the community based on new significant research and findings around this topic. So you can be rest assured that the guidelines in the document reflect the latest findings in academic and industry research.
- An open and collaborative effort: as with all W3C activities, the creation and maintenance of the XAUR is a collaborative effort that any user of the web can contribute to. It takes into account different viewpoints and actively collaborates with other groups within W3C to ensure the guidelines provided accurately reflect user requirements across different impairments. Check out the references section of the XAUR which provides a glimpse into the variety of resources and inputs from different groups across W3C.
- Web and native: the XAUR is not just about native XR, the user requirements provided are relevant to both native and WebXR, thus regardless of the platform you’re using, be it native or web, the user requirements in the XAUR would still provide valuable guidance for both.
What if I told you that a large percentage of potential users might never even engage with your experience at all simply because it doesn’t meet their specific needs? Not due to lack of interest, but because they are physically or/and cognitively can’t access or fully enjoy the content you are offering. Consider this: around 24% of the UK population identifies as having a disability, but here is the key point about this statistic — around 70%-80% of disabilities in Education and Employment are invisible, meaning that they may not be immediately obvious to others, which makes it even harder to for developers to try and assume — or worse guess — the abilities (and disabilities) of their end users. Think about what this means: if you’re not building your XR experience with accessibility in mind, you’re already alienating nearly a fifth of your audience without even realising it!
We can get even more specific — certain age groups may not use immersive technologies extensively (or at all), such as young children under 10 or adults over 75 or 80 years old. After excluding users due to age, you’re potentially excluding an even higher percentage of your core audience by not designing for accessibility.
“24% is not really a big deal…”
You might think that 24% isn’t a huge deal (and rightly so it is a small-ish number after all), but we need to put 24% into context here because business impact wise — 24% can make or break..
In a fast-growing and competitive market like XR, losing 24% of your users could be the difference between success and failure. That 24% represents thousands — maybe millions?— of users who could be engaging with your experience and driving revenue or word-of-mouth promotion. Losing 24% of users also means you may have to spend more on marketing or customer acquisition. Beyond retaining 24% of your users, accessible and inclusive design benefits all users. Think about features like captions, voice commands or simple navigation, they’re not just useful for people with disabilities but for everyone. They’re no longer extras or nice-to-have features (and shouldn’t be — ever).
As XR technologies become more mainstream with a much higher user base, accessibility becomes more and more critical. This is where accessibility standards such as the XAUR encourages developers to think inclusively, designing XR experiences with a broad spectrum of needs in mind. If you are in a position, as a developer or a company, where you cannot afford to carry out your own user research around requirements due to time or/and cost constraints, you really can’t wrong with checking out the XAUR!
Additionally, as with all W3C specification documents, you can find out how to get involved by referring to the “Participate” or/and “Feedback” sections at the very top of documents. For the XAUR document specifically, you can help in creating a more accessible XR future by providing any feedback on the GitHub issues page.
This feels like the right way to end this post: please use it! 😀
Muadh out — Until next time! 🤜🤛
