Sometimes we forget how Virtual Reality could potentially change the lives of people with disabilities. We recently did a VR activation for one of our clients and at the event we met with a lady that was disabled.
The lady enjoyed the experience thoroughly and was amazed at the places that she could go in Virtual Reality. Unlike a couple of years ago commercial and high quality Virtual Reality is now available and affordable to persons with disabilities and can have a major positive impact on their lives.
In virtual reality people with limited disabilities but being wheelchair bound can now go places where they could not go before.
How Virtual Reality can change Peoples lives with disabilities
Below is some of the ways virtual reality can be used to better the lives of people with disabilities.
- Explore spaces anywhere in the world without being physically present at the space. In High-End virtual reality using room scale virtual reality a disabled person can move freely around in the space using motion movement or teleporting from one spot to another spot. Effectively moving in that space completely immersed and free from their disability.
- Google Street View and Google Earth allows people with disabilities to undertake tours in Real Life, by exploring wheelchair accessibility in Virtual Reality before making a trip. Google Earth is one huge virtual reality platform with most of the world accessible to anyone in a Wheelchair to explore.
- It might sound strange, but VR can help people recover from injuries much quicker and faster. Someone with temporary disability could potentially start walking in Virtual Reality and the psychology behind it could motivate people to work harder to gain mobility. Seeing is believing and VR could potentially have a powerful effect on people’s minds and activate the parts in individuals with temporary disability to overcome it!
- People with disabilities and depression might feel that they don’t have a purpose after getting disabled. In VR people might find new motivation and become more positive and regain their zest for life!
- MIT and other pioneers in Mind-Controlled Virtual Reality is working on systems that would allow people to use only their “Minds” inside VR to control their interaction in VR. Soon people with full disabilities would be able to immerse themselves into virtual reality and become fully productive in Virtual Reality. They could potentially work inside virtual reality and the output affects real life. Eg someone with severe disabilities can do office work in VR, Analyze Data and even participate in Virtual Sports and play games in VR.
- Eye Controlled Virtual Reality interaction. Again there are people at MIT and other leading research institutes that are working on eye controlled VR interaction systems. Soon people with severe physical disabilities would be able to immerse themselves into Virtual Reality and complete several tasks inside VR simply by blinking or looking at stuff inside the VR world.