Enhancing Accessibility through Virtual Environments.

You feel alone. It's like you're the only one who has to do it. You feel that no one will be there to help you to out of these situations.

Similar thoughts and expressions of serf-doubt have run through everyone's mind at one time or another. However, when it is the sentiment of an individual with extensive physical disabilities expressing apprehension toward all new community experiences, the ramifications seem overwhelming. For individuals with disabilities, questions surrounding community access abound. Will sufficient parking be available, and is there adequate space to lower my wheelchair lift from the van? Where is the accessible entrance to the building? Are there automated door openers? Where are the elevator, accessible restrooms, telephone, and drinking fountains? Do the locker rooms have a wheel-in shower and low lockers and mirrors?

These are all situations that an individual with a disability must examine as he or she explores access in the community. It is not surprising that people with disabilities have expressed fear of injury in new environments. A recent survey has suggested that 36 percent of women with physical disabilities indicated unfamiliar surroundings as a barrier to social involvement.

To mitigate some of these negative thoughts requires new approaches, and technology may be the answer. The creation of virtual reality environments may help individuals with disabilities transition into the community, thus alleviating fears and increasing accessibility knowledge. These individuals could use virtual reality to "experience" a location before actually visiting it.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality refers to an alternative world filled with 3-D computer-generated images that respond to human movements. These simulated images can be enhanced through the use of stereoscopic goggles and fiber optic data gloves. Virtual reality integrates computer graphics, body-tracking devices, visual displays, and other sensory input devices to immerse a participant in a computer-generated environment.

Virtual environments will attempt to simulate, electronically, the actual environment as closely as possible. Two technologies, Virtual Reality Modeling Language and Quick Time Virtual Reality, are available. VRML allows 3-D structures to be produced from blueprints or from scratch by a graphic artist. QTVR uses actual digitized photographs of existing structures. Multiple photographs are "stitched" together to produce a larger panorama.

Both systems allow the user to "navigate" the various scenes of buildings and objects by using a series of mouse clicks on the computer. With additional hardware, users can become more immersed in the scene. The hardware consists of a head-mounted display similar to goggles with a small computer screen for each eye. The display allows for stereoscopic viewing of the scenes, which adds to the realistic effect. In addition, the display contains a "head tracker," which allows the user to look around a scene by simply moving his or her head. A third element that adds to the total immersion is sound. Realistic audio, such as that of a door opening or a wheelchair lift rising, completes the effect.

Virtual Reality and Therapeutic Recreation: A Brief History

For the past six months, a team of professionals has been working on a pilot project to explore virtual reality and therapeutic recreation applications. With a provost's incentive grant from the Metropolitan State College of Denver, the city of Golden Recreation Center was placed into virtual reality using QTVR. Therapeutic recreation students were paired with technical communications majors to learn how to use laptop computers and access virtual reality information.

Then, in cooperation with the special needs program of Denver Parks and Recreation, therapeutic recreation students provided individuals with disabilities support for community integration, and had an opportunity to test the virtual reality prototypes on laptops. The virtual reality information was available on the project's Web site, but access was severely limited at locations where students worked with consumers. Therefore, CD-ROMs containing the virtual reality information were given to students for use on project laptops.

Clients were asked to view and compare the environments created in the two different virtual reality technologies: the Golden Recreation Center, which was created in QTVR, and a VRML-created computer laboratory. Preference data for each technology were noted. Results suggested that the individuals with disabilities overwhelmingly supported the QTVR modeling language. The photo-realism of the scenes was preferred to the "cartoonlike" VRML. Anecdotal comments by the participants indicated the value of "the virtual reality project" in helping people overcome their apprehension of new places. Other comments, provided by individuals with and without disabilities, suggested the need for additional computer adaptations for successful use with people with various physical disabilities.

An Enormous Future

While virtual reality and therapeutic recreation have a brief history togetherz, the potential of these areas in the enhancement of community integration is enormous. Virtual reality research supports therapeutic use of the technology and discusses many benefits for individuals. Fear of heights was reduced in patients after exposure to virtual reality, and spatial information acquired by children with physical disabilities from exploration of a virtual environment has been shown to transfer to the real-world equivalent. Other researchers suggest that virtual reality can provide people with a wide range of simulated experiences sans participation. This clear support of virtual reality technology warrants further development, not just to provide individuals with simulated experiences, but for the integration of people with disabilities into society.

The virtual reality team at Metro State in Denver is committed to exploring the opportunities for the enhancement of community access. Perhaps your facility will be the next one placed into virtual reality.

The research team at Metropolitan State College of Denver includes Jane Kaufman Broida, CLP, CTRS, knowledge of individuals with disabilities; Dr. Clark Germann, expertise in technology; Scout Houck, virtual reality development; and Will Spence, consumer representative. Research references can be requested from Jane Kaufman Broida, MSCD, P.O. Box 173362, Campus Box 08, Denver, CO 80217-3362.

"Technology presents therapeutic recreation with a dynamic future," says this month's guest editor, Jane Kaufman Broida, CLR CTRS, a professor and interim assistant dean in the school of professional studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver. "Our job, as therapeutic recreation specialists, is to accept the accompanying change and seize the opportunities that technology holds for our profession. We have many new avenues to explore. In the long run, our consumers and our profession will benefit." In "Enhancing Accessibility through Virtual Environments," which begins on page 94, Broida.

Dr. Clark Germann, an associate professor of technical communications at Metro State, examine the link between the world of virtual reality and therapeutic recreation, and the potential benefits the collaboration offers for the enhancement of community access.