Workology Podcast Episode 138 – Future of Work: Virtual Reality and Accessible Workplace Technology

Workology Podcast | www.workologypodcast.com | @workology
Episode 138: The Future of Work:
Virtual Reality & Accessible Workplace
Technology
Episode Link: https://workolo.gy/ep138--wp
Intro : [00:00:01] Welcome to a new series on the Workology Podcast that focuses on
the future of work. This series is in collaboration with the Partnership in Employment
and Accessible Technology or PEAT. You can learn more about PEAT at
PEATworks.org.
Jessica : [00:00:14] The area of virtual reality and augmented reality is a growing
space. The VR industry increased to 90 million active users in 2017 and is projected to
increase to 171 million users in 2018. I've had several podcasts interviews over the last
three years that touch on the topic of VR for recruitment. It is just starting to emerge as
a powerful technology and tool for the workplace. The question is: how do we make
these emerging technologies more accessible for all employees and job candidates?
That's what we're going to be talking about today. Welcome to the Workology Podcast.
This is a part of an ongoing series we're continuing that focuses on the future of work.
This series is in collaboration with the Partnership in Employment and Accessible
Technology or PEAT. Today, I'm joined by Beth Crutchfield and Jessie Haugh. Beth
Crutchfield is the Vice President of Strategic Consulting and Training services with
Level Access. Jesse Haugh is an Accessibility Specialist also with Level Access. Level
Access is in the accessibility business and has existed and longer than any of its
competitors. They have supported the accessibility initiatives of more than 1,000
organizations from leading government agencies to enterprise class firms to smaller
sized companies. Beth and Jessie, welcome to the Workology Podcast.
Jessica : [00:01:42] Let’s start with Beth. First, can you tell us a little bit more about
your background?

Beth : [00:01:47] Yes, as you mentioned my title is Vice President of Strategic
Consulting and Training. Prior to that, I worked for Capital One Financial Corporation for
about 20 years. In my last role at Capital One, I stood up and ran their digital
accessibility governance programs so that was the bulk of my last five years of Capital
One. For 15 years prior, I spent a tremendous amount of time in the legal regulatory
space standing up policy program infrastructures for all the key laws, regulations and
support practice fees. So I have a lot of depth in the legal regulatory space and then a
lot of depth in the technology space.
Jessica : [00:02:44] Thank you so much for joining. I can’t wait to hear you give us
some more insights into virtual reality and augmented reality. Jessie, what about you?
Tell us a little bit about your background.
Jessie: [00:02:58] Yes, hi. I am an Accessibility Specialist at Level Access. I am also
the Head of Research and Development for the Abel Gamers charity and that's where
my background primarily comes from is with accessibility within the realm of video
games. But then also, with the emergence of virtual and augmented reality, my
background is coming in primarily with the mobile apps. The focus on the services side
is doing testing of different kinds of software and websites to ensure that they are
compliant. So it's great to be here.
Jessica : [00:03:42] Let's talk a little bit more about some of the exciting technology
projects or things that Level Access is working on or has worked on in the past. Walk us
through that.
Jessie: [00:03:53] Yeah, absolutely. Right now and for the years to come we're really
doing a revamp and working on our accessibility management platform. It's where our
client can use a platform for all their accessibility needs whether it be testing or looking
up different standards and they can also do in-house testing with our platform and we'll
work on fixing those accessibility issues. So that's one of our great technologies that we
have here at Level Access, but we also have our analytics tool as well. What’s neat is
that this is a Javascript tool that can spider through any one of our client’s sites, if they
use web applications, for example, and pick up the accessibility issue. Then we
also bring back data to the client stating what kind of end-users are using the website
currently. That user might be using a different technology so it's really important data for
them to know their audience and who’s going to their website.

Jessica: [00:05:11] I love that. I think about HR and the recruiting space and maybe
how a career site could really use some of the technology that you guys have available
to help make their hiring process more accessible.
Beth: [00:05:28] In addition to what Jessie mentioned, we do have a couple of other
things that are that are a little bit noteworthy. We offer packages of deliverables for
specific purposes addressing policy and governance. So that blueprint is kind of the
foundation of our governance infrastructure for an organization that's looking to adopt
an accessibility policy or be proactive with respect to things like VR. And then, in
addition to that, we have several other packages that do an inventory of what your
assets look like that might be at risk from an accessibility perspective, especially in the
VR space. And then we have one that's used in situations where you might be faced
with litigation. It's a package that offers a standard set of services that will help you as
you navigate the legal landscape in this space. And then the last thing I'd mention is a
product that is for use in situations where you're doing continuous and graded testing
during your software development lifecycle so that product is coming out later this year
and it's a heavy development at this stage.
Jessica: [00:06:53] Wow, that's a lot of different options and offerings. I feel like there
are so many questions and technologies changing, so you guys cover a lot of ground.
Our podcast today focuses on accessible virtual reality and augmented reality. For
those of us who might not be aware or familiar, can you explain to us the difference
between VR or virtual reality versus augmented reality?
Jessie: [00:07:22] Yes, absolutely. Virtual reality is often referred to as VR and it's a
computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or an environment that
can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by someone who's using a
special electronic equipment. You often see people with a helmet and a screen over
their eyes, and they have gloves on with sensors. It’s really a way where the end user,
or someone who is using it, is completely cut off from his or her own reality or is placed
in a whole new virtual reality. Then on the other side, you have augmented reality, or
AR for short. This is technology that superimposes, say, a computer-generated image
on the user's real world. It provides kind of a composite view. For this, the end user is
still in their actual true reality. But there is a computer-generated image in their reality
and that's through a screen. My best example for this is Pokemon Go. I bet many, many

listeners or their kids have heard of Pokemon Go. That's a good example of augmented
reality. An example of virtual reality which maybe not as many have heard of would be
say Batman: Arkham VR, which you can go on YouTube to see.
Jessica: [00:09:04] Wonderful, thank you for your insights in those areas. I am a huge
Pokemon Go fan. I still play occasionally, mostly because I have a 9-year-old little girl
and we like to go chase Pokemon.
Jessie: [00:09:20] It’s a lot of fun and I will say that I have participated in Pokemon Go
without a child and with friends, so it’s great. It’s a great opportunity and a good
example of augmented reality technology.
Jessica: [00:09:36] A lot of recruiting and HR teams are adding the VR components
into their recruiting and hiring processes. For example, I talk to Gap in a previous
podcast episode where they use VR as a virtual office tour getting candidates to
experience what it's like to work in their San Francisco and New York offices. I love their
VR experience and I remember asking about accessibility for people with disabilities
when it comes to VR. Can you talk us through some of the accessibility work you're
doing in this area?
Jessie: [00:10:06] We are actually doing a lot of work with our partners. Through the
games charity I mentioned earlier, I'm involved in some trials on different ways to make
VR applications accessible through the best practices that we already use for game
development. We extrapolate from those best practices when needed within the VR
area. So that's currently some of the work that we're doing in this area. It’s trial and
error; seeing what works versus what doesn't work and for which individuals that these
different avenues do and don't work.
Jessica: [00:10:46] Let’s take a bit of a reset here. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell and
you’re listening to the Workology podcast in partnership with PEAT. Today we’re taking
about VR and AR accessibility with Beth Crutchfield and Jessie Haugh. The Workology
podcast future of work series is supported by PEAT, the Partnership in Employment and
Accessible Technology. PEAT is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of
Disability Employment policy. You can learn more about PEAT at PEATworks.org.

Jessica: [00:11:36] One of the things I love about virtual reality is that it is truly an
immersive experience and I think your explanation and definition of virtual reality was
spot on. You put that headset on and you’re transported to a completely different place,
oblivious of everything around you. I just saw Ready Player One this weekend finally
and that was really great movie. If you want to really understand what virtual reality is
about, I think it’s a great movie to check out and experience. There was a lot of buzz
about it during South by Southwest so I thought, yeah, maybe it’s time to see it. I
thought it was a great representation of maybe the future of virtual reality and some of
the challenges that we might experience.
Jessica: [00:12:26] I think that sometimes when it comes to accessibility, we might
assume accommodations to our designs are made just for physical reasons. I think
that’s not always true. Can you talk about some of the virtual reality design updates of a
non-physical nature that you’re working with right now?
Jessie: [00:12:51] Yeah, absolutely. You're right that sometimes there’s a
misconception that we're focusing on mobility only, but there are three other groups that
we should always focus on when think about accessibility in this field: visual, auditory
and cognitive. The whole angle with any of these is that you always want to provide
options to the users and that they can turn options on or off. Just having that availability
makes a world of difference. But the visual is needed, like changeable text and color
sizes. Say you're doing the office tour with virtual reality. That allows different sizes of
text to say what the different meeting rooms are, for example. Being able to enlarge text
is especially important as we get older. Also, different color-blind options could be
available as well. It is a really great accessibility best practice to include and is also
useful for low-vision users. The auditory placement of the event stimulus is a way for
people with low-vision to have an audio description of what they're perceiving within the
VR world so audio announcements, for example, might include some audio describing
the environment. But then you also have in view closed captioning, which is really
important.
Jessie: [00:14:54] You also have an ongoing cognitive group. Mostly what’s needed for
this group is different tutorials about even just how to interact with the Wii. Application
tutorials like that are really important. Intuitive menus are important too, especially for
someone to use their first time. Also, something that I think ties across the board is
vertigo. Sometimes people with disabilities may get vertigo easily. And that's a big issue

that's happening right now with VR. I got floored one time testing a VR roller coaster.
And I think that was the worst idea for me especially was to be on a VR roller coaster.
But we did the testing and we told them to give the customer some way to slow this kind
of movement down so that they can handle it and enjoy it at a comfortable speed. So
that's really beneficial. Again, it all ties back into customization and providing options.
Mobility is very critical and very important, but we need to continue to keep in mind that
you have these other three categories as well and they’re needed to make sure that
whatever is being created is as accessible as possible.
Jessica: [00:16:28] Another growing area in the AR and VR space for workplace and
human resources is training and employee communications. Can you talk about some
of the other ways you've seen AR and VR being used in the workplace?
Jessie: [00:16:44] Yeah, definitely for training. I think we've all heard about death-by-
PowerPoint trainings and all that. Right now, there are new ways of training to use so
that we're not just relying on PowerPoint and very visual kinds of stimuli. I think virtual
board meetings are cool, where you're in the same room as everyone else using VR. It
adds a new avenue to learning with employee training. Say maybe you’re training with
HR and say it's in the medical field, for example. What if you could have that beating
heart in a car right in front of you as you're training someone how to do some different
medical procedure? That's a great way to use VR specifically in that way. And that's
being used in that way in the workplace. I've also seen VR used with physical therapy
and occupational therapy as well, especially for neo-military members coming back over
and maybe they are missing a limb and are trying to learn to walk again and now they're
using different prosthetics. They put on a virtual reality helmet and they're walking
through a space and what they're doing is truly walking but they look down and they see
both of their legs in a virtual reality interface. So it's really neat that they're practicing
walking on the prosthetics and their virtual reality interface lets them see both their legs
so it helps the brain to make the physical connection. I've also seen that as another
really cool way that VR is being used in the workplace.
Jessica: [00:18:28] I love all those ideas. I think there’s a huge future in these areas.
There’s also a lot of technology development in videos and VR recording that’s going to
need to be able to happen before all these things are made available for employees.
Let’s say you’re a mechanic and you need to learn how to repair a car or an aircraft or
something like that. Can you take advantage of VR in these different ways?

Jessie: [00:19:03] Oh, absolutely. What I also really love about that is safety. For
example, for a first-time mechanic learning how to fix a plane, it’s much safer for them to
practice in a virtual reality environment than the true reality. Because if you mess up in
virtual reality, there are no real-world consequences there. So you can practice over
and over again.
Jessica: [00:19:40] If one of our listeners is wanting to add VR or AR to their training or
recruiting programs, where do you think they should begin? How could they get started?
Jessie: [00:19:52] It’s all about working with developers in the field of virtual and
augmented reality. From there, you start the storyboards to determine what do they
want from his application in all the development stages. What is their goal with their
applications? If it is a recruiting program, what kind of end goals do they have for that
recruiting program that they want to see? From there, you’ll want to make sure that
accessibility is being talked about from the very beginning of development because it is
much easier and also much cheaper to include accessibility best practices at the
beginning and throughout that development lifecycle versus doing it retroactively
afterwards. So that would be my advice.
Beth: [00:20:39] One thing I would add here is that as you're thinking about this and
using it in your own internal environment, in addition to what Jessie mentioned, you
might also want to be thinking about what accessibility standards you want to adopt.
And then also beginning perhaps that journey that we talked about earlier around
thinking about and inventorying your assets that are VR and what accessibility support
you have in place. That way, if folks are asking questions, you are able to answer those.
With respect to where the accessibility stands with your AR and VR, you can also fold
that into any internal governance that you have related to accessibility. That would be
an important step to consider.
Jessica: [00:21:31] One other question I wanted to ask is do you have any resources in
those areas that we can maybe point to folks to on the Level Access site or some sort of
video or e-book or an online resource that they could go to for more information? I think
that as far as more information about AR or VR, I feel like the accessibility piece of it is
new for many people. I was just at a recruiting conference and we talked about simply

just recruiting and making your website accessible. And for probably 90 percent of the
people in the room, it was the first time they ever heard this conversation. So where do
people go?
Jessie: [00:22:36] Yes, so listeners can go to our Level Access website where they can
learn more about accessibility and the work that we do regarding accessibility directly
for virtual and augmented reality. Beth and I just attended a conference recently where
we talked about accessibility in this field and they can download that PowerPoint
presentation from the website as well.
Jessica: [00:23:00] And then it sounds like you also have an accessibility gaming white
paper that we're going to link to in the resources section of the podcast as well.
Jessie: [00:23:08] Yes, that white paper is focused on accessibility in video game
development but there are best practices you can extrapolate from there for virtual and
augmented reality.
Jessica: [00:23:31] A lot of recruiting teams are also looking at gamification to drive
engagement and activity, even in the application process. They’ll want to add
accessibility into that too so there will probably a lot of really good pieces of information
that they can pull from that white paper. Well, Beth and Jessie thank you so much for
joining us today. I know we talked about the Level Access website but where else can
listeners go to get in connect with you, say if they want to have a conversation about
accessibility in VR and AR?
Jessie: [00:24:00] For me, I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn.
Beth: [00:24:00] I’m happy to connect that way too.
Jessica: [00:24:42] Awesome. I will be sure to include links to both Beth and Jessie's
LinkedIn profile so you can connect with them there and then send them over message
on how to help get folks started on accessibility in the workplace for the VR and AR.
Thank you so much for taking the time to join the podcast today. I really appreciate your
insights on this fast-developing, emerging area.

Jessica: [00:24:41] I love hearing about how these new technologies are growing and
the different ways and methods that you can make them more accessible to everyone. I
look forward to touching base with Level Access again to get an update on how this new
industry has evolved and the strides in case studies that are being made in VR and AR
accessibility. There is a growing trend in our workplaces where technology from
consumer markets is finding a home and application in our offices. It's important for us
as HR and workplace leaders to make time to understand, consider and make room for
these uses and applications in the businesses that we support. Thank you for joining the
Workology Podcast, a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader who's tired of the
status quo. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell. Until next time, you can visit workology.com to
listen to all our previous Workology Podcast episodes
Exit: [00:25:31] Production services for the Workology Podcast with Jessica Miller-
Merrell are provided by Total Picture.com.
Episode Link: https://workolo.gy/ep138--wp

Workology Podcast Episode 138 – Future of Work: Virtual Reality and Accessible Workplace Technology

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Workology Podcast Episode 138 – Future of Work: Virtual Reality and Accessible Workplace Technology