Second Life Accessibility

“In discussing the relationship between the first life body and second life avatar, the usual question raised is how our self-created bodies reflect our given ones of flesh and blood. How do virtual bodies and real bodies interrelate?” – Rivka Rau

This discussion took place in Second Life. Read the transcripts at http://www.gimpgirl.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=12

You must create an account at Gimp Girl in order to read the transcripts. There is no charge for an account.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%204/159/5/25

Within Second Life, the Heron Sanctuary provides an ongoing community of support for people with disabilities.

“We do a lot of dancing and have parties. We just hang out at the virtual pool and chat. We have taken folks to walk in the virtual woods, climb mountains, go virtual skydiving – all kinds of things that are profound and a pleasure to someone with physical or mental limitations.”

Joseph Button was a talented writer and comic who created the avatar Hunter Talon in Second Life. Unfortunately Joseph passed away recently, after living nearly twenty-five years with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a rare medical condition. View the YouTube video to observe Joseph’s computer setup for writing and participating in online worlds.

The in-world memorial service for Hunter Talon will be private. All are encouraged to plant a flower at The Big Easy sim in his name.

Joseph Button’s story http://www.josephbutton.com/bio.php

Hunter Talon Remembered http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/04/hunter-talon-re.html

Brigadoon is no longer in existence, but individuals with autism and aspergers’ syndrome can now go to “Naughty Auties Haven.” It sounded like the site may be for adults only, so I went to take a look. It appears to be family friendly except for the store next door selling clothes and body parts to make money for the virtual space. I wouldn’t bring any kids with you, it is an area deserving its “Mature” rating.

Message from David Sparrow, creator of Naughty Auties Haven:

One of the main problems with Autism for day to day life is the communicative skills; the problem being Autistic people do not develop them usually to the same degrees normal people, facial expressions and body language might as well not be there for an autistic person as they just are not registered by the brain.

Now you are probably familiar with symbols which are all over the internet now but only really took off a few years back:etc etc msn/icq/aol/skype is full of them. Well what I found helped me over come my communicative skills were believe it or not online chat rooms, I would spend ours speaking to people online, literally soaking up what everyone was speaking about, soaking up all the little images they would make; hug signs, smiley signs, angry signs etc etc and matching them up to what they were typing about.

Subconsciously, my brain was learning from the internet chat rooms about communication, what “normal” peoples brains have the luxury of learning from Real Life interaction, but without the stresses and strains which real life interaction causes to an Autistic person.

The location on SL is Crystal Isles (165, 225, 21) For more of the story, check out:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Sighted people in the physical world perceive hundreds of visual objects at a glance, but automatically ignore items that are not immediately important or operationally relevant or are otherwise not interesting. Similarly, a person who is blind in a virtual setting may need to establish selective perception filters to limit cognitive overload caused by overdetailed environments. There are essential operational properties of objects, but there is also a frequent abundance of decorative properties that have no operational value and can be safely ignored. We propose that virtual reality should first provide a full range of operational capability for users who are blind. Decorative aspects are secondary. It may not be essential to know that the avatar is standing in a virtual field of 4-inch-tall multicolored Portulaca flowers, the sun is shining 32.5 degrees above the horizon, and nearby avatars all look like feathered lizards–except for one who is impersonating a Texan Houston Toad. More important, what are the names of avatars surrounding the blind user? What are they chatting about? What objects can be manipulated in the vicinity, and what transactional options do they yield? “What is my location, and where are my friends?”

http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw090207 

Panelists: Atsuko Watanabe and Jondan Lundquist

Here is a link to a chat transcript from a discussion in SL regarding accessibility. It is mostly about universal design, but I did find the following enlightening:

“Why is the built world of SL not more accessible, but much less so than the RL? My only interpretation is that SL is more a mirror of the real attitudes of the inhabitants than the real world. Certainly it isn’t the cost. Maybe it is a reflection of the “medical model” – that people with disabilities are broken and that they need to be fixed, and in SL, no one should have a disability because it is “Wrong” somehow. I’m not broken, I am proud of who I am.”

http://healthinfoisland.blogspot.com/2008/02/accessing-second-life-universal-design_28.html

Wilde Cunningham is an avatar controlled by a group of nine adults with cerebral palsy (and their nurse) at the day-care programme they attend in Massachusetts. The group members are aged 30 to 70 and comprise four men and five women. Most of them are wheelchair users and rely on their carers for almost all aspects of their daily lives. Yet in Second Life they have built their own houses, have pets, gardens, even a baseball field. They also have many close friends and a large social network. “Second Life gives me the chance to be the person I feel I was born to be,” says John S, 32, one of the group. “Being in Second Life is how I imagine an innocent man who had been locked up wrongly feels when he is finally set free. In Second Life I get to call the shots.”

Read more at http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article1557980.ece

A good video about Wilde Cunnigham is available at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3547970n&channel

I would be interested in trying my hand at providing real-time captioning of voice chat for a conference with folks that are deaf. I am not sure about the best way to do this, perhaps IMing to a group at the same time the conference is going on. I don’t think it will work to use the text chat if others are also using it.

The advantage to this is that the voice chat will be recorded in transcript at the end of the conference, same as the text chat.

If you would allow me to experiment with this at your next event, please let me know.

MovableLife allows Second Life users to log in to Second Life using only a web browser. MovableLife allows chat, IM, search, teleport, manage friends, groups, and much more, providing a Second Life experience without all the 3D graphics.

Movable Life article

Another advantage to using a regular browser, is that it can be used by iphones and other devices, and also the bandwidth is reduced for use on older computers with modems.

SLeek Download

SLeek is an open source low tech client to use SL without all the fancy graphics. It would be useful for individuals with visual impairments, but consider also its use for students in low tech environments, for instance at home on an old computer with a modem.