Arlington, VA – On Tuesday, October 7, Stephanie Montgomery, XRA’s Senior VP of Research & Best Practices, participated in a panel at the M-Enabling Summit in Arlington, VA. The panel, “Accessible and Assistive XR Applications,” sought to address the ways in which XR technology can serve and assist users with disabilities, as well as the evolving standards of the industry.
The panel was hosted by XR Access co-founder Larry Goldberg, who led the panel through discussions of XR’s ability to aid diverse populations and needs. Panelist Brian Fischler from Yahoo! highlighted the latest wearable tech, speaking to how Ray-Ban Meta glasses have helped him navigate the world as a blind man. He shared a moving testimony about the first time he used the device to describe the details of his surroundings. He explained the glasses’ role in his day-to-day life and how they have helped him to improve agency and autonomy.
This prompted discussions of privacy implications of the glasses, as well as the greater standardization of XR technology. As Stephanie Montgomery shared, “XR technology is innovating quickly. In the four years I’ve been at XRA, at least three new headsets and five different AR glasses have been announced or released. Technical standards always lag technology, and with the rate of innovation in XR, a technical standard could be obsolete before the standard is published.”
Rounding out the panel, Dylan Fox from XR Access and Raja Kushalnagar from Galudette University shared how XR is positively impacting the lives of people with disabilities, how solutions for those with disabilities are solutions for everyone, and some of the challenges going forward as the tech is widely deployed.
This event is the annual forum and showcase of the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict), seeking to promote technological accessibility to those with disabilities. Member companies represented by speakers include Meta, Google, and Pearson.
