ACCESSIBILITY FROM VIRTUAL REALITY TO THE METAVERSE IN THE ECOSYSTEM OF SOCIO-DIGITAL INEQUALITY: INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS

Year 2022, Volume: 22 Issue: 1, 84 - 99, 31.07.2022

Fatih Erken

https://doi.org/10.54961/uobild.1133333

Abstract

The concept of socio-digital inequality that continues to deepen in the world expands to include visually impaired individuals on the scale of Virtual Reality and Metaverse technologies. This article evaluates the current situation of the topic and refers to the current work of disadvantages, socio-digital inequality, virtual reality issue, and accessibility to the Metaverse. In this framework, the potential for socio-digital inequalities of Metaverse technology has been discussed and solution suggestions have been presented. The work is important for the visually impaired to understand, know and emphasize the disadvantages of "Metaverse" within the framework of socio-digital inequalities.

SOSYO-DİJİTAL EŞİTSİZLİK EKOSİSTEMİNDE SANAL GERÇEKLİKTEN METAVERSE’E ERİŞİLEBİLİRLİK: İÇERİDEKİLER VE DIŞARIDAKİLER

Abstract

Dünyada derinleşerek sürmekte olan sosyo-dijital eşitsizlikler, sanal gerçeklik ve Metaverse teknolojileri ölçeğinde, görme engelli bireyleri kapsayacak şekilde genişlemektedir. Konunun güncel durumunun değerlendirildiği bu makalede; dezavantajların kesişimine, sosyo-dijital eşitsizliğe, sanal gerçeklik ve Metaverse’e erişilebilirliğe ilişkin problemler, mevcut çalışmalara değinilerek ortaya konulmaktadır. Bu çerçevede, meta evrenin sosyo-dijital eşitsizlik potansiyeli tartışılarak soruna ilişkin çözüm önerileri sunulmuştur. Çalışma; Metaverse’ün görme engelliler açısından yaratacağı dezavantajların, sosyo-dijital eşitsizlikler çerçevesinde anlaşılması, bilinmesi ve vurgulanması açısından önem taşımaktadır.

Keywords

Sanal gerçeklik, metaverse, dijital bölünme, sanal eşitsizlik, sosyo-dijital eşitsizlik, genişletilmiş gerçeklik

References

• Aksoy, T. (2021). Türkiye ekonomisinde büyüme, kalkınma ve eşitsizlik. Kent O. Vd., (ed.) Türkiye'de bölgesel yoksulluk, büyüme ve gelir dağılımı içinde ss.109-134 ss.109-134. İstanbul: Efil Yayınevi.
• Andrade, R., Waycott, J., Baker, S., & Vetere, F. (2021). Echolocation as a means for people with visual impairment (pvi) to acquire spatial knowledge of virtual space. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), 14(1), 1-25.
• Angeline, M., Luthfia, A., Safitri, Y., Widyakusumastuti, M. A., & Wibowo, D. (2021, August). Towards Digital Equality: Assessing Youths’ Digital Literacy Capabilities. In 2021 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) (Vol. 1, pp. 282-286). IEEE.
• Bergström, A. (2017). Digital equality and the uptake of digital applications among seniors of different age. Nordicom Review, 38(s1), 79-91.
• Dobransky, K., & Hargittai, E. (2016). Unrealized potential: Exploring the digital disability divide. Poetics, 58, 18-28. Egard, H., & Hansson, K. (2021). The digital society comes sneaking in. An emerging field and its disabling barriers. Disability & Society, 1-15.
• Eichhorn, T., Jürss, S., & Hoffmann, C. P. (2022). Dimensions of digital inequality in the sharing economy. Information, Communication & Society, 25(3), 395-412.
• Franks, M. A. (2017). The desert of the unreal: Inequality in virtual and augmented reality. UCDL Rev., 51, 499.
• Gaafar, A. A. (2021). Metaverse in Architectural Heritage Documentation & Education. Advances in Ecological and Environmental Research, 6 (10), 66-86.
• Gerling, K., Dickinson, P., Hicks, K., Mason, L., Simeone, A. L., & Spiel, K. (2020, April). Virtual reality games for people using wheelchairs. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-11).
• Georgiadou, A. (2021). Equality inclusion and diversity through virtual reality. In The Palgrave Handbook of Corporate Sustainability in the Digital Era (pp. 181-193). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
• Golding, P., & Murdock, G. (2001). Digital divides: Communications policy and its contradictions. New Economy, 8(2), 110-115. Han, I., Shin, H. S., Ko, Y., & Shin, W. S. (2022). Immersive virtual reality for increasing presence and empathy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.
• Hardee, G. M., & McMahan, R. P. (2017). FIJI: a framework for the immersion-journalism intersection. Frontiers in ICT, 4, 21.
• Hardee G.M. (2016) Immersive Journalism in VR: Four Theoretical Domains for Researching a Narrative Design Framework. In: Lackey S., Shumaker R. (eds) Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. VAMR 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9740. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39907-2_65
• Hargittai, E., & Hinnant, A. (2008). Digital inequality: Differences in young adults' use of the Internet. Communication research, 35(5), 602-621.
• Helsper, E. (2021). The digital disconnect: The social causes and consequences of digital inequalities. Sage.
• Hu, S., & Lai, B. W. P. (2022). Increasing empathy for children in dental students using virtual reality. International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry.
• Johansson, S. (2019). Design for Participation and Inclusion will Follow: Disabled People and the Digital Society (Doctoral dissertation, KTH Royal Institute of Technology).
• Johansson, S., Gulliksen, J., & Gustavsson, C. (2021). Disability digital divide: the use of the internet, smartphones, computers and tablets among people with disabilities in Sweden. Universal Access in the Information Society, 20(1), 105-120.
• Klochko, O. V., Fedorets, V. M., Shyshkina, M. P., Branitska, T. R., & Kravets, N. P. (2022). Using the augmented/virtual reality technologies to improve the health-preserving competence of a physical education teacher. AET 2020, 726.
• Kshetri, N. (2022). Web 3.0 and the Metaverse Shaping Organizations’ Brand and Product Strategies. IT Professional, 24(02), 11-15.
• Kun, Y. U. E. (2022). The Metaverse in the Psychoanalytic Perspective: The Unleashed Human Id in the Metaverse. Lee, L. H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., ... & Hui, P. (2021). All one needs to know about metaverse: A complete survey on technological singularity, virtual ecosystem, and research agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05352.
• López-Ojeda, W., & Hurley, R. A. (2022). Extended Reality Technologies: Expanding Therapeutic Approaches for PTSD. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 34(1), A4-5.
• Lynch, G. (2012). A Metaverse Art Residency: ‘Garrett Lynch Yoshikaze “Up-in-the-air” Second Life Residency’. MVCR, 2(2), 163–181.
• Maboe, M. J., Eloff, M., & Schoeman, M. (2018, September). The role of accessibility and usability in bridging the digital divide for students with disabilities in an e-learning environment. In Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (pp. 222-228).
• Milanović, B. (2016). Global inequality: A new approach for the age of globalization. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Mott, M., Cutrell, E., Franco, M. G., Holz, C., Ofek, E., Stoakley, R., & Morris, M. R. (2019, October). Accessible by design: An opportunity for virtual reality. In 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct) (pp. 451-454). IEEE.
• Mystakidis, S. (2022). Metaverse. Encyclopedia, 2(1), 486-497. 29. Penfold, P. (2009). Learning Through the World of Second Life—A Hospitality and Tourism Experience. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 8(2-3), 139-160.
• Piketty, T. (2013). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Powell, W., Powell, V., & Cook, M. (2020). The accessibility of commercial off-the-shelf virtual reality for low vision users: a macular degeneration case study. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 23(3), 185-191.
• Rock, I., & Victor, J. (1964). Vision and touch: An experimentally created conflict between the two senses. Science, 143(3606), 594-596.
• Seo, M. (2022). A Bible Didactical Approach to Bibliodrama on the Metaverse Platforms. Journal of Christian Education in Korea, 69, 45-75.
• Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2016). Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 3, 74.
• Tangcharoensathien, V., Mills, A., Das, M. B., Patcharanarumol, W., Buntan, M., & Johns, J. (2018). Addressing the health of vulnerable populations: Social inclusion and universal health coverage. Journal of Global Health, 8(2), 020304.
• Teófilo, M., Lucena, V. F., Nascimento, J., Miyagawa, T., & Maciel, F. (2018, January). Evaluating accessibility features designed for virtual reality context. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
• Tijan, E., Aksentijević, S., Ivanić, K., & Jardas, M. (2019). Blockchain technology implementation in logistics. Sustainability, 11(4), 1185.
• TÜBİSAD. (2021). Türkiye’nin dijital dönüşüm endeksi 2021 raporu. Retrieved from: https://www.tubisad.org.tr/tr/images/pdf/tubisad-2021-dde-raporu.pdf
• Van Deursen, A. J., Helsper, E., Eynon, R., & Van Dijk, J. A. (2017). The compoundness and sequentiality of digital inequality. International Journal of Communication, 11, 452-473.
• Wang, F. Y., Qin, R., Wang, X., & Hu, B. (2022). Metasocieties in metaverse: Metaeconomics and metamanagement for metaenterprises and metacities. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 9(1), 2-7.
• Wedoff, R., Ball, L., Wang, A., Khoo, Y. X., Lieberman, L., & Rector, K. (2019, May). Virtual showdown: An accessible virtual reality game with scaffolds for youth with visual impairments. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-15).
• Zaman, U., Koo, I., Abbasi, S., Raza, S. H., & Qureshi, M. G. (2022). Meet Your Digital Twin in Space? Profiling International Expat’s Readiness for Metaverse Space Travel, Tech-Savviness, COVID-19 Travel Anxiety, and Travel Fear of Missing Out. Sustainability, 14(11), 6441.
• Zhao, Y., Bennett, C. L., Benko, H., Cutrell, E., Holz, C., Morris, M. R., & Sinclair, M. (2018, April). Enabling people with visual impairments to navigate virtual reality with a haptic and auditory cane simulation. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-14).
• Zhao, Y., Cutrell, E., Holz, C., Morris, M. R., Ofek, E., & Wilson, A. D. (2019, May). SeeingVR: A set of tools to make virtual reality more accessible to people with low vision. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-14).