Accessibility Issues
3D Virtual Worlds
3D Virtual Worlds
Accessibility Issues
Aims of ALTC grant
Issues Encountered 
Trials conducted
3D virtual worlds can:
Objectives
Current Solutions
Future Plans
Future Plans
Introduction to Digital Media
Provide a more engaging environment
Alternate Viewers, Text SL, Etc.
Access to education
Learning curve for students
Investigate accessibility issues
The log-in screen not accessible 
Need for provision of an audio message and a text list of avatars 
Max
Support Groups
Accessibility Challenges 
and Solutions
Access to information and services
Opportunities for employment
Equal access for everyone
Allow more flexibility in attendance
Create a sense of community
Develop problem-solving skills
Simulate things not possible in ‘physical life’
Allow increased creativity
Build team work and communication skills
Electronic Publishing on the Internet
Design for Interactive Media
From Mickey to Manga
Accessible Interactive Media 
Some students found communication difficult
Many students found interface challenging
Identified accessibility concerns 
$205,000 grant from ALTC
Identify available accessibility solutions
develop open source accessible 3D VLE
Create accessible teaching tools
Develop guidelines
Local chat window not accessible to screen readers

User interface of client is not accessible 
to screen readers & does not support a range of alternative accessing devices
User generated content not accessible
Tab-index required to provide logical order 
Need for a simple author solution enabling users to add descriptive labels for objects and longer descriptions for posters and slides
Lack of synchronized streaming 
captions for videos 
Need for text transcriptions for streaming audio
Max Voice Plus Application
Virtual Guidedog
SecondAbility Mentors
User contributed tools and solutions
Other organizations and projects
The community
Develop an accessible log-in screen 
which will include:
a.Viewer version and update checking
b.Notification of log-in availability
c.Log-in location in the form
Provide the user with links to 3D virtual world resources and materials 
Incorporate the text-to-speech engine into the client
Utilise the same text-to-speech system and various other adaptations to make the 3D virtual world client accessible to screen readers and alternate input/output systems

Develop and distribute a set of tools and guidelines to educate and make it easy for builders to incorporate these features into their content
Make applicable tools and open source platform freely available to the community