Projects

Metaverse Standards Forum Accessibility Working Group

The Accessibility in the Metaverse Working Group is part of the Metaverse Standards Forum, a consortium that aims to "foster the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse". I co-chair this group, which aims to generate insights, identify risks, and recommend strategies and best practices to ensure that immersive experiences, environments, interfaces, and interactions are accessible to all, regardless of abilities or disabilities and access needs. Many of the accessibility challenges relate to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), collectively known as XR. Interaction in 3d is a new type of user experience, for which we don't yet have comprehensive information about the accessibility challenges. This group explores the accessibility issues and solutions in emerging XR technology, and aims eventually to produce guidance that can be taken up by standards organizations.

Currently I participate in this project as a volunteer, and can't spend as much time on it as I would like. If you see benefit in contracting or sponsoring some of this work, please contact me.

European Accessibility Act and EN 301 549 explainers

Digital Accessibility Centre commissioned me to write in-depth explainers of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and the EN 301 549 standard. The European Accessibility Act sets accessibility requirements for certain products and services in the European Union. Most of the requirements relate to consumer Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The EN 301 549 harmonised standard sets out the specific ways to meet the ICT-related EAA requirements.

The EAA explainer details all the stakeholders with obligations under the EAA, and details the obligations for each type of economic actor. It also collates the accessibility requirements for products and services, forming a summary of how products and services will need to conform. The EN 301 549 explainer describes how to understand the technical requirements in the standard. It collates the requirements by type of product and type of accessibility requirements in order to show how they come together for various products.

We published the European Accessibility Act explainer in December 2024. The EN 301 549 explainer is due to be published in January 2025.