A Simulation of “Physical Ability” for the Physically Disabled (Crippled) using Virtual Reality

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Virtual Reality as a field has been around for several decades. Even though it began as an initiative in the entertainment industry, today it has found an application in fields such as military, automotive industry, social networking, businesses and medicine. Of late VR applications to aid physically challenged have been gaining ground.

More and more NGOs and sponsors are coming forward to help the Physically Challenged people and are taking care of not just their physiological needs but are also training them for jobs, guaranteeing them economic stability and a good living.

What perhaps is left unnoticed is the “Psychological Feel Good Factor” of these disabled people. These people have to accept that their life would never ever be normal and they would never be able to move again. This is where Virtual Reality can be used to bridge the gap between “disability” and “ability”. Virtual Reality can act as a platform to simulate a life of “physical ability” for the physically disabled. Besides social networking, it would also let them do acts like walking, running etc which otherwise they can’t do in their real life because of their disabilities. Imagine a physically disabled person scheduling a walk with his physically able friend on the Miami Beach on a weekend.

Proposed Approach for this endeavor:

1.To identify an NGO (Or home for disabled), that provides accommodation to the disabled people. It should have considerable funds to be able to provide the minimum hardware required for the installation.
2. A Virtual Environment to be created which has the same look and feel as the place where the disabled are living. This would help them feel more closely attached to the simulated environment.
3. Creating additional spaces like Café, Garden, and Beaches etc which might be of interest to them.
4. Deployment of server at their location and connecting clients though a Local Area Network.
5. Creating log-in accounts for the people.
6. A workshop to train the people with the features of this environment.
7. Their feedback in terms of an Objective/Subjective Questionnaire.

I conducted a survey of about 50 people, of different age groups and from different educational background to know their opinion on how they perceive the Virtual Worlds for an application like this.

The exact statistics and graphs can be viewed at:http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/9/26/2116444/VRDisabled.pdf

Conclusion:

Approximately 90% of the participants found the concept of using Virtual Worlds for the people suffering from Physical Disabilities to be appealing while the rest were not convinced with this concept. As much as 80% of the participants said that they would advice Virtual Worlds for people suffering with physical disabilities. They believed that imparting a few moments of happiness to the physically challenged giving them a feeling of being a normal human being, like all others in this world, to make their life lively, is where the technology should be used. Approximately 16% of the participants thought that such an imaginary environment sounded nice but in the long run, would expose them to a virtual self, make them do things otherwise impossible to do which might affect them psychologically.

Supervised exposure to the Virtual Environment could prove to be beneficial for the physically challenged and if that happens, would be an apt use of the technology.

Please click on the link: http://xrl.us/virtual to view a presentation followed by a short objective Questionnaire.