Extended Realities for Sensorially Diverse Children.

Abstract

Learning space for children with different sensory needs, nowadays, can be interactive, multisensory experiences, designed collaboratively by 1) specialists in special-needs learning, 2) extended realities (XR) technologists, and 3) sensorial diverse children, to provide the motivation, challenge, and development of key skills. While traditional audio and visual sensors in XR are challenging for XR applications to meet the needs of visually and hearing impaired sensorial-diverse children, our research goes a step ahead by integrating sensory technologies including haptic, tactile, kinaesthetic, and olfactory feedback that was well received by the children. Our research also demonstrates the protocols for 1) development of a suite of XR-applications; 2) methods for experiments and evaluation; and 3) tangible improvements in XR learning experience. Our research considered and is in compliance with the ethical and social implications and has the necessary approval for accessibility, user safety, and privacy.