SeeingVR Toolkit

Sample Implementation:  Here is a proof-of-concept using the SeeingVR Toolkit in a Unity project to create a minature VR museum experience in order to test out the accessibility features.

• To explore the features, we start with some 3D web models orginally the UC Berkeley P.A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology(link is external) portal.
• Using Meshlab and Blender, the files were converted to FBX(.fbx) format and imported into Unity.
• For testing out the SeeingVR features, a mini museum scene provides room features, artifacts, text, etc. 
• The SeeingVR plugins for Unity are organized as a prefab using a script Manager pattern.
• The SeeingVR toolkit offers more than a dozen virtual assistive technology functionalities including:
  • Magnification Lens enables people with low vision to see details.
  • Bifocal Lens is a smaller, rectangular-shaped magnifier (up to 10x magnification) at the bottom of the user’s visual field.
  • The Brightness Lens allows the user to adjust the brightness of the scene.
  • The Contrast Lens increases the luminance contrast of the scene. 
  • Edge Enhancement adds edges to the whole virtual scene based on the depth and surface normal change to help segment objects from each other. 
  • Peripheral Remapping is for people with peripheral vision loss.
  • Text Augmentation improves text contrast by automatically changing its color to black or white to ensure text contrast always satisfies the 4.5:1 ratio.
  • Text to Speech provides audio augmentation. 
  • Depth Measurement adds a laser to the controller, with a ball appearing at the intersection point when the laser hits an object.
• For object recognition, object can be given tags  and descriptions in a fashion similar to Alt Attributes, the Description label is a way to provide a description of a virtual object and the isSalient label is a way to signal whether a virtual object is important for the Highlight and Guideline tools
• Below are some movies from within the mini museum VR scene trying out some of the toolkit features.
• in the Mini Museum w/Edge Enhancement movie, notice the depth probe going right through the basket object on the left. That’s simply because a Mesh Collider had not been added to basket object.