Play 7: Getting to Work

You’re ready to start the hard work, identifying the projects your community will execute. This play isn’t a one and done. You’ll live in this Play (along with Play #8 and 9) as long as your community is engaged in creating and executing activities. The activities your community focuses on will look different at various stages in your initiative. To be successful, you’ll need to start with projects that help build momentum within your community to act and give participants a firm understanding of the existing landscape. From there, you can use what you learn to begin to build recommendations and resources to support stakeholders in designing your technology to be accessible.

XR Access

XR Access

XR Access researched the accessibility of existing applications, hardware, tools, and platforms; mapped existing guidelines, policies, and practices for developing accessible technologies; surveyed stakeholders on how they use XR in personal and professional contexts and any barriers they encounter; and more.

TIPS

  • Collaborate on Planned Activities: Based on the Scope of Work outlined in Play #3: Structure Your Initiative, collaborate with community members to execute on planned activities and produce deliverables, keeping in mind the Shared Goals & Objectives defined in Play #6: Build Your Community.
  • Start with the Low-hanging Fruit: In the early stages of your initiative, identify a project or projects that can be easily accomplished and completed in the short term to build momentum (the low-hanging fruit).
  • Understand the Space: Figure out what you need to know. Before you can determine how to develop accessible emerging tech (i.e. how to build it) it can be helpful to figure out what is and isn’t being created and the barriers obstructing the development.
  • Place User Needs First: It’s important to have a firm understanding of the needs of people with disabilities before making recommendations for the design and development of emerging technology. Consider how you can place user needs first when embarking on activities.
  • Build Tools & Resources: Consider working with your community to create tools and resources that can be shared with stakeholders to support others as they design for accessibility.
  • Get Diverse Input: It’s important to have individuals with different abilities contribute their expertise throughout the stages of the initiative to ensure you’re taking multiple perspectives into account when executing.
  • Remember it Takes Time: Your work will continue to evolve over time. Know that some of your projects will move slower than others, and some might stall before getting off the ground. That is ok. Return to the long-term goals you created with your community to keep yourself and your group on track.

Guiding Questions to Get You Started:

  1. What are the 5-10 activities you hope to accomplish over the next year? How would you prioritize them by level of importance and complexity?
  2. To help build momentum, what are 2-3 projects you can complete in the next few months that will give your initiative credibility and help you grow your community?
  3. What is the intended result of each of the activities you’ve identify? How will your activities further your vision?
  4. What do you need to understand about the state of accessibility and user needs?
  5. Which problems do you need to address before your emerging technology can be made accessible?
  6. What are the big, open questions you need to answer to fully achieve your vision? For instance, which guidelines, policies, and practices are needed to ensure all industry leaders follow a set of standards when developing products?
  7. Which accessibility challenges do you need to address to support people with diverse disabilities including physical, sensory, cognitive, and neurological disabilities? For instance, how can a person who is blind interact in a virtual world with verbalized cues? How can a deaf person watch a 360-degree video without subtitles/captions and sign language?
Continue to Play 8: Evaluate Your Impact