New World Newsfeed: Will Virtual World Access For The Disabled Become Legally Mandatory?

Recent dispatches from the outside world...

Recent Target Settlement Raises Questions About Virtual World Access for Users with Disabilities | Virtually Blind

As virtual worlds become more popular for practical real world applications like education, commerce, and more, there's a distinct possibility that the US (and presumably, other nations) will require developers to make them accessible for the disabled.  Why? Benjamin Duranske of Virtually Blind cites a recent lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind against the retail giant Target.

The group sued to make Target's website accessible for the sight-impaired.  Applying that precedent to virtual worlds, Benjamin writes:

[E]ducational and enterprise virtual-world users (such as colleges requiring student attendance in virtual-world classrooms and businesses with both “click” and “brick” presences) could also be obligated to make their virtual world builds more accessible to disabled users.

Sounds like a plausible outcome to me, and ultimately, a good one.  My personal estimate is that some 10% of the Second Life population have some kind of physical or mental disability, so it already makes sense to make the virtual world fully accessible to all of them.  Additional accessibility will make SL and other worlds even more attractive to the disabled, fostering the sense that "Second Life is my wheelchair", as one of them put it so profoundly.

Comments

[Negko DeVinna]

For people who are interested in questions about inworld accessibility, you can contact groups such as Virtual Ability. V.A. now has a sim dedicated to help SLers for an easier control of the UI and a better SL user experience.

[Daniel Livingstone]

One application of the SLOODLE project is to provide alternative (web-based) access to Second Life based activities. Chat-rooms, quizzes, glossary access, voting tools and more - participation and viewing of results available via a Moodle LMS or in Second Life.
More at http://www.sloodle.org