Skip to content

IDEATExR Workshop

ISMAR is hosting their third rendition of the Workshop on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Transparency, and Ethics in XR (IDEATExR) at ISMAR ’24 in the Greater Seattle Area, Washington, United States! To be held on Friday, 25 October 2024.

The schedule is below, with background on what IDEATExR’s goals and why the workshop is timely following. You can download a pdf version of the schedule here.

TimeEvent
08:30 – 08:40Welcome & Opening Remarks
08:40 – 10:00PAPER SESSION
1. AI-Powered AR for Enhancing Sports Playability for People with Low Vision: An Exploration of ARSportsJaewook Lee, University of Washington
2. XRAI-Ethics: Towards a Robust Ethical Analysis Framework for Extended Artificial IntelligenceLorenzo Stacchio, University of Macerata
3. INDYvr: Towards an Ergonomics-based Framework for Inclusive and Dynamic Personalizations of Virtual Reality EnvironmentsRaquel T. Cabrera-Araya, Texas A&M University
4. Design Considerations for Augmented Reality Location-Based Exergaming: Lessons from Pokémon GoWallace Morris, Virginia Tech
5. Five Ways Function Models Enable Accessible Mixed Reality InterfacesPer Ola Kristensson, University of Cambridge
6. VR/AR for Users with Tic Disorders: Challenges and OpportunitiesJoseph McVelia, Lancaster University
10:00 – 10:30Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:20Keynote Speaker – Dr. Brendan David-John (Virginia Tech)
Privacy, Awareness, and Ethics in an Eye-Tracked Extended Reality
11:20 – 12:00Discussion Session: Security and Privacy in Mixed Reality

Due to the important, evolving, and shifting nature of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR, this workshop has five main goals:

  1. To provide a vehicle through which to understand better the pulse of the community surrounding these issues of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR,
  2. To shine a spotlight on these issues for community members who perhaps haven’t given them much consideration,
  3. To celebrate those that are engaging in research either true to the spirit of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR, or those engaging in research about these topics specifically,
  4. To help researchers better understand how to ensure their work are more inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, transparent, and ethical,
  5. And to bring together disparate perspectives and research foci together under a shared goal to be inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, transparent, and ethical in XR. This goal can be shared by software, hardware, and human-focused researchers.

The potential benefits of XR should be for all, regardless of their cultural background, gender identity, race, neurodiversity, ethnicity, economical status, age, etc. However, our community is still facing challenges preventing everyone from being involved in xR.

Most research within this space relies on the M-WEIRD population and researchers (Male, White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), effectively missing 95% of the world’s population [1], thus hindering generalizability of findings and diversity of ideas. In fact, approximately 95% of the global population is excluded from VR research and only 15% of first-paper authors at ISMAR and IEEEVR are women [2]. Moreover, the ethics informing XR research have been identified as one of the grand challenges facing human-computer interaction research today, with the replication crisis featuring transparency as a critical step for remediation. These factors make formal discussions surrounding inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR not only timely – but necessary. And we want you to be a part of them.

Premier venues for AR/VR (or XR) research do not have a clear code of ethics including issues surrounding diversity that could help provide greater DEI initiative consistency between conferences and guidance to researchers. It’s important to note that these concerns are also relevant to technical work not involving human participants as they also play a role in research teams, ideas, proposed solutions, conduct, etc.

Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to provide their insights on what is working for our community, as well as what isn’t – effectively helping to shape the future of IEEEVR and ISMAR.

The IDEATExR Organizers
Lee Lisle, Ph.D., Virginia Tech, llisle@vt.edu
Cassidy R. Nelson, Ph.D., Ohio University, cassidynelson@vt.edu
Matt Gotsacker, University of Central Florida, mattg@ucf.edu
Missie Smith, Ph.D., Auburn University, missie.smith@gmail.com

CITATIONS

  1. T. C. Peck, K. A. McMullen, J. Quarles, K. Johnsen, C. Sandor, and M. Billinghurst, “DiVRsify: Break the Cycle and Develop VR for Everyone,” IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl., vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 133–142, 2021, doi: 10.1109/MCG.2021.3113455.

  2. T. C. Peck, L. E. Sockol, and S. M. Hancock, “Mind the Gap: The Underrepresentation of Female Participants and Authors in Virtual Reality Research,” IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph., vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1945–1954, 2020, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2973498.