Type of Project: Funded project Joint project
Inclusive Collaborative Environments for Workers with and without Visual Impairments Using Virtual Reality (InclusiveVR@Work)

In recent years, virtual realities (VR - Virtual Reality) have developed strongly and are now not only used in the leisure sector but also in the professional context. The reason for this is that application-oriented training scenarios can be simulated in VR when certain situations are associated with risks in the real world. In addition, VR enables decentralized collaboration, where different people can work on content simultaneously in a shared virtual space without having to be on site. Using this possibility of cooperation 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 for which there are no uniformly applicable solutions. 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 the workplace in vocational training and further education. This is achieved through the individual adaptability of the working environment to the visual impairment, the integration of classic work 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 base, 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 attainable.