Realistic virtual worlds are used in video games, in virtual reality, and to run remote meetings. In many cases, these environments include representations of other humans, either as stand-ins for real humans (avatars) or artificial entities (agents). Presence and individual identity of such virtual characters is usually coded by visual features, such as visibility in certain locations and appearance in terms of looks. For people with visual impairments (VI), this creates a barrier to detecting and identifying co-present characters and interacting with them. To improve the inclusiveness of such social virtual environments, we investigate which cues people with VI use to detect and recognize others and their activities in real-world settings. For this, we conducted an online survey with fifteen participants (adults and children). Our findings indicate an increased reliance on multimodal information: vision for silhouette recognition; audio for the recognition through pace, white cane, jewelry, breathing, voice and keyboard typing; sense of smell for fragrance, food smell and airflow; tactile information for length of hair, size, way of guiding or holding the hand and the arm, and the reactions of a guide-dog. Environmental and social cues indicate if somebody is present: e. g. a light turned on in a room, or somebody answering a question. Many of these cues can already be implemented in virtual environments with avatars and are summarized by us in a set of guidelines.
Guidelines for Inclusive Avatars and Agents: How Persons with Visual Impairments Detect and Recognize Others and Their Activities