Accessibility in the Metaverse – 2025 Q2
Quarterly Report | Apr – Jun 2025 | Metaverse Standards Forum
Accessibility in the Metaverse Working Group Chairs:Michael Cooper (Aihal Accessibility), Dylan Fox (XR Access), James Maki (Inclusive Reality)
Executive Summary
In Q2 2025, the Accessibility in the Metaverse Working Group held 6 general meetings, expanding to 60 members, and began updating its long-term vision. A significant achievement was the publication of the white paper, “Good Intentions, Real Barriers: Investigating Accessibility in XR Workflows,” along with an interactive Figma prototype, summarizing user research on accessibility barriers in XR. The group continued refining the “virtual museum tour” use case, breaking down key tasks and examining them through the lens of W3C disabled personas to inform ability-agnostic criteria. Additionally, members participated in the 2025 XR Access Symposium, discussing the need for codified accessibility and ethical policies in the metaverse. The group aims to create a working draft of XR accessibility criteria and examples in the next quarter.
Operations
Over the course of Q2, we held 6 general meetings and added another 9 new members to our roster, bringing us to a total of 60. We also began a review of our Long Term Vision to bring it up to date with our current trajectory.
Research
User Research: White Paper Published
Last quarter we began a user research project intended to understand the accessibility barriers facing XR practitioners. Mrunmai Abhyankar, a graduate student of the University of Austin, worked under co-chair Dylan Fox to conduct user interviews with approximately 20 XR creators and accessibility specialists to understand their approach to accessibility in extended reality.
This quarter, we are proud to announce the publication of the results as both a white paper and interactive Figma prototype. These can be found here: Good Intentions, Real Barriers: Investigating Accessibility in XR Workflows.
Our first published white paper, exploring how accessibility figures into XR developer and accessibility tester workflows.
Use Cases: Refining the Virtual Museum
We continued our use case work from last quarter, focusing especially on the use case of students in a virtual museum tour. We broke it down into four key tasks:
Choosing an avatar to represent them in the museum
Moving around the museum space, observing and interacting with the exhibits
Attending a one-to-many presentation from the curator, including a 2D slide show
Collaborating in small groups with other students on a project related to their experience
We then examined how four of the W3C disabled personas would complete each of these tasks. This provided insight into how to frame our criteria around ability-agnostic actions, and showcased some of the ways that disabled users could interact with XR.
Outreach
MSF at the 2025 XR Access Symposium
Several members of the MSF Accessibility Working Group attended the 2025 XR Access Symposium, XR Access’ annual conference focused on extended reality accessibility. In particular, the XR/AI Policy & Standards breakout discussion touched on the need to codify and enforce accessibility and other ethical policies for the Metaverse.
The XR/AI Policy & Standards breakout discussion of the 2025 XR Access Symposium included several members of the MSF Accessibility working group.
Goals for Next Quarter
In the next quarter, we plan on moving from use cases to focusing on our next core deliverable informed by our user research: a list of XR accessibility criteria and examples. We also intend to refine and update our long-term vision.
