Despite the benefits visualizations can bring to understanding and communicating relevant societal issues such as climate change, they are difficult to access for one in 24 people in Switzerland who live with a visual impairment. Therefore, this project explores the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) for inclusive knowledge transfer through the participatory design of an interactive visualization that can be discovered and experienced through haptic feedback and spatial sound. The VR experience was designed in an interdisciplinary team consisting of individuals from computer, learning, climate science and sound design, while involving the target group of blind and visually impaired people along the way through interviews, meetings and testings. This process led to the creation of an accessible, embodied, audio-haptic infographic about the global water cycle and its links to extreme weather events. Based on these findings, the project derived design guidelines to support the future development of inclusive visualizations using VR technology. Ultimately, these experiences can support multi-sensory, body-based learning and provide a new approach to experiencing visualizations that can be beneficial to all learners.
«Helena Viktoria Klein developed this VR experience in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of experts from the areas of computer sciences (Future Embodied Learning Technologies – FELT, ETH), didactics (PHZ), climate sciences (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH & WSL) and sound design (ZHdK). The target audience of blind and visually impaired people was closely involved in the entire development process through interviews, workshops and several rounds of testing. The result is a milestone prototype for further research, which makes a virtual world explorable as an audio-haptic 3D infographic. Knowledge about the global water cycle and information about the causes and effects of extreme weather events become tangible in a playful and multi-sensory way.» – Excerpt supporting statement of the Subject Area Knowledge Visualization
«The project is impressive as it applies a holistic, participatory and interdisciplinary approach to combine seemingly unconnected subject areas and types of media in a creative way. The result is a prototype with a high degree of social relevance and great potential for future application.» – Helena Viktoria Klein
«I see my role as a knowledge designer in communicating societally relevant scientific information to the public and making it more accessible by means of multimedia design.» – Helena Viktoria Klein
