Part 3 of VR wrtie-up

To Jason

As discussed in the last meeting, here's my draft Part 3 of the VR write-up to add to your sections. I've kept it broad given your sections are more technical so its easier to pull it all together at the end.

Scott.



SIMULATION OF DISABILITY IN VIRTUAL REALITY

The third primary use of VR in a disability context relates to the simulation of a disability within a virtual environment.  Applications for the simulation of disability include rehabilitation of an acquired disability, preparation for people with disabilities to interact with a new environment and as a training mechanism for people to learn about a particular type of disability.

Initial work in the area of simulation of a disability in VR commenced in the early 1990s whereby a proof-of-concept based on sensing gloves was used to diagnose and train patients post hand surgery. Other researchers pioneered the use of virtual environments in phobias, attention deficit, post-traumatic stress and other conditions. In 1996 researchers interested primarily in VR phobia treatment started the Cybertheory conference series, and VR-based physical therapy, occupational therapy, therapy for learning deficits, and amnesia were reported at the first International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (Burdea, 2009).

While the early examples of VR simulation bare little resemblance to the immersive environments now available, the move towards a more autonomous delivery of e-health services has seen a number of recent innovative ways on how people with disabilities can be supported through the use of VR. For example, a computer-assisted motivational neurorehabilitation framework has been designed and implemented. Focused particularly on supporting people recovering from stroke-related injuries,  the system integrates support for a suite of standard-compliant computer input devices, including force-reflecting joysticks and driving wheels as physical therapeutic interfaces along with support for a suite of personalize and remotely tenable goal-directed performance assessment and motivational interventional exercise protocols, including features like data archive, management, and analysis tools. The system also provides support for personalized VR user interfaces that are tuned to the abilities and preferences of the user while also supporting emerging user interface and remote access standards. (Feng, 2007). As a result of VR, medical staff were able to effectively monitor and determine the likelihood of a stroke occurring (Feng, 2007).

As VR solutions have continued to become more immersive and  affordable, the use of disability simulation in a rehabilitation context has moved beyond monitoring and includes more focus on the completion of everyday tasks. This is often achieved by a combination of VR and robotics to provide support to people with disabilities moving around in a simulated environment (Hakim, Tunis, & Ross, 2017)  Such features allow for environmental conditions to be simulated in practical ways such as practicing the use of a wheelchair in VR by adjusting the perspective of the user from a standing to a sitting position and simulating the speed of movement.

While the use of VR to simulate an environment for a person with a disability is effective, it can also be useful as a training mechanism for people that need to learn about disability-related scenarios. In particular, medical staff and other industry professionals that are not familiar with the experience of a particular disability can significantly benefit by experiencing a simulated disability and associated environmental interaction in VR (Forczek, Makra, Lanyi, & Bari, 2015) The use of VR in this context enables people to provide improved support to people with disabilities by learning about their need and gaining a deeper insight through a simulated disability experience. This use of VR can also extend to the workplace whereby a simulated environment can help to prepare a person with a disability for entering a particular job or to learn new ways to interact with an office environment (Jansari, Agnew, Akesson, & Murphy, 2004).

In essence, the specific recommendations for VR simulation in a disability and rehabilitation context can largely be categorised into two fundamentally important requirements: The first is to ensure that accessibility is considered as a mechanism to provide therapeutic benefit to the person with a disability immersed in VR, the second is to provide information about their disability to the person with a disability, such as in an e-health context (Forczek et al., 2015). Furthermore, provisions may need to be considered as to how best to provide a standardised experience to people using VR as a mechanism to understand disability that is not based on their own experience.


REFERENCES

Burdea, G. C. (2009). Rubber ball to cloud rehabilitation musing on the future of therapy (pp. 50-50).

Feng, X. (2007). Upper-extremity performance assessment using an interactive, personalized computer-assisted neurorehabilitation motivating framework. In J. M. Winters (Ed.): ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Forczek, E., Makra, P., Lanyi, C., & Bari, F. (2015). The Internet as a New Tool in the Rehabilitation Process of Patients-Education in Focus. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 12(3), 2373-2391.

Hakim, R. M., Tunis, B. G., & Ross, M. D. (2017). Rehabilitation robotics for the upper extremity: review with new directions for orthopaedic disorders (Vol. 12, pp. 765-771): Taylor & Francis.

Jansari, A., Agnew, R., Akesson, K., & Murphy, L. (2004). The Use of Virtual Reality to Assess and Predict Real-world Executive Dysfunction: Can VR Help for Work-placement Rehabilitation? Brain Impairment, 5(1), 110.





[Scott Hollier logo]Dr Scott Hollier
Digital Access Specialist
Mobile: +61 (0)430 351 909
Web: www.hollier.info<http://www.hollier.info/>

Technology for everyone

Keep up-to-date with digital access news - follow @scotthollier on Twitter<http://twitter.com/scotthollier> or e-mail newsletter@hollier.info<mailto:newsletter@hollier.info> with 'subscribe' in the subject line.