How To Design Diversity And Inclusivity In The Metaverse
White Paper
Executive Summary
The Metaverse offers a creative human experience, removes physical constraints and creates a limitless virtual space. It offers 3D experiences using Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality and Extended Reality technologies to create a virtual space providing the best experience in terms of communication and interaction with each other where users can experience more autonomy within digital spaces.
The Metaverse is in its early stages of development and is not fully implemented for public usage. It is made up of many technologies, combining the Internet, 3D items, open standards for media, open programming language standards, decentralized ledgers, and smart contract platforms on various blockchains.
Web3 should be an open, decentralized community with equal opportunities and space for all. But there are challenges faced by women and underrepresented groups.
Imagine the first-ever decentralized Metaverse with no sexism, racism or bullying. A place where everyone is welcome, and women and underrepresented groups of all ages can feel safe as part of a like-minded community. A Metaverse which is created and led by a diverse cross-section of stakeholders. Where education and support to onboard and empower women, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC and individuals with differing cognitive or physical abilities are priority requirements.
A space that offers a safe and inclusive environment with minimal barriers to entry, providing blockchain education and empowerment, making the minorities the majority.
A virtual planet where everyone is respected and their work and needs are valued equally. All metaverse platforms should be like this.
About the Author
Charmaine Short is a web3 consultant, NFT art collector and writer with over 20 years of experience in finance and IT including the private and public sectors in the UK and Europe.
In 2020, Charmaine co-founded a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Women of Crypto Art (WOCA) that puts art on the blockchain as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). She is passionate about promoting blockchain technology and her company Ettaverse provides consultancy and education to help more people to embrace web3 and the Metaverse.
She is a member of the Metaverse Standards Forum and a regular speaker on podcasts about the Metaverse and conferences such as the International Women of Blockchain.
Introduction
This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities to lower the entry barriers to the Metaverse and create an inclusive Metaverse that empowers everyone and ensures equal access and respect.
Women of Crypto Art (WOCA) supports women artists to “Be seen, Be heard, and Be welcome” in the NFT community. The fact that in the 21st century, there is a need for this organisation, speaks volumes about the way society values the art of women creators less than art created by men. This is one example of many imbalances web3 could address.
We need to create an inclusive Metaverse that empowers everyone and makes it a space where everyone feels welcome and safe.
Problem Definition
We are tired of people being bullied for their ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation, bored with women avatars in computer games being sexualized or minor characters and frustrated when our calls for accessibility are ignored.
One of the earliest examples of such issues in the Metaverse was in 2019 when women NFT enthusiasts were invited to a round-table discussing how to encourage more women to use a particular Metaverse. But when trying to join the conversation in the web browser, the only avatar available was the default white male. Guests contacted the platform asking how to select a female avatar and were told, “There wasn’t one.” The platform owner wanted more women users but didn’t see it as a priority to give women or people of colour their own identity. Imagine a group of international women standing around a table in the Metaverse looking like white men!
Challenges
So what are some of the challenges to be addressed? People are spatial beings; we enjoy live events like concerts and movies. As the Metaverse evolves, we need to make virtual gatherings more accessible with immersive tools.
There are issues with non-adjustable VR headsets, such as inner-pupillary distance. Women generally have smaller heads than men and experience simulation sickness while wearing a VR headset with the wrong pupillary distance. It’s like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription.
This is one example of the many challenges to take into consideration, including digital literacy, disability, language barriers, sexual identity and bullying of underrepresented groups.
The Need For An Inclusive Metaverse
The Metaverse is as diverse as the real world and our doorway to experience technology in a new way. We must be mindful not carry the bias from our web2 lives into the virtual world.
Tech firms must continue to fight for more inclusion and diversity in all technologies to further practice equality and diversity in the Metaverse.
Disability intersects with all dimensions of human diversity. We must collaborate to make technology easier for everyone.
Leveraging marginalized people’s knowledge, skills, and experiences can help us build more accessible technology and experiences for the Metaverse to help everyone thrive. To do this, we should ALL be included in designing and developing it, so we can all participate — including people with disabilities.
How Do We Practice Inclusion?
Inclusion is a global issue. For an equitable Metaverse, we must look at the concerns of different groups and find solutions to incorporate inclusivity into immersive experiences.
As part of this, we should provide more opportunities for projects led by people from different backgrounds including women and underrepresented groups to leverage these communities. This will ensure online experiences consider the requirements of everyone.
We all know that things work better when we design for accessibility from the start. We need to analyse what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to improve. The best strategy is to consider who the system is being developed for. People with disabilities exist across all gender, race, geographical, educational and socioeconomic areas. Developers and creators need to hear the requirements of the most marginalized groups during the early stages of product design. We must use the technology to empower a broader group of people, including those with cognitive and physical disabilities. Examples include those who can’t wear VR headsets or integrate the use of assistive devices like cochlear implantations or over-the-ear hearing aids to enhance a deaf person’s Metaverse experience. Then everyone can enjoy an immersive experience.
These steps will be cheaper than retrofitting fixes for accessibility after product launch.
There have been reports of VR users in Nigeria having the straps of their Oculus Go snap. This is because the designers didn’t consider African hairstyles in the hardware design.
We need to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility (DEIA) in our culture so technology works for all users in the future.
What are some of the barriers users experience with Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)?
- Missing alt text on images
- Ambiguous link text
- Unclear controls
- Time-outs that can’t be controlled
- Understanding the order and meaning of words
- Becoming overloaded by information
- Difficulty discriminating some colour contrasts
Designers need to speak to people from diverse communities to support the co-design of extended reality (XR) before developing the technology so it works for everyone out of the box. Like speech to text on smartphones.
Interoperability
Web3 and the Metaverse are unlike the web2 Internet of today which is made up of apps and websites. Blockchain technology will enable us to connect to the Metaverse through individual nodes worldwide. So, no specific platform should be required to access any digital space. Beyond Virtual Reality (VR) headsets such as Meta’s Oculus and Microsoft’s HoloLens or Mixed Reality (MR) hardware such as Smart glasses, people should be able to engage with the Metaverse using any smart device, including a PC, tablet or mobile phone.
Inclusion in the Workplace
Female legislators change the way that politics is conducted — women are more likely to incorporate citizen input, emphasize communication, and act as facilitators.
The U.S. Department of Labor* ‘Office of Disability Employment Policy’ (ODEP) and the Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology (PEAT) are working to leverage emerging technologies to make workplaces more inclusive. This includes research, and an open-source design framework for immersive technology. The framework includes text descriptions for 3D environments, navigation cues for visually impaired people and scaffolded content for people with cognitive disabilities. The toolkit takes a human-centred approach to the Metaverse, putting people with disabilities at the forefront of technology standards. It is being used by organizations like Meta, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to ensure users’ fundamental needs are included, so everyone has the opportunity to succeed in an equitable, robust and competitive workforce of the future.
Disabilities
Disabled populations were some of the earliest adopters of extended reality (XR) technology like Oculus headsets. Wheelchair users can use VR headsets in static mode or set them to react if the wheelchair moves. Many users say the experience offers them a great sense of freedom and even pain relief. The Metaverse can empower differently-abled people to operate on an equal footing with everyone else. But we have to consider their additional requirements when designing the Metaverse.
Digital Literacy
With the growing number of blockchains, Women of Crypto Art helps support and onboard creators starting their NFT journey by providing blockchain guidance and education.
WOCAs values are (DEFI):
WOCA invites women and anyone who supports their mission to amplify the voices of women artists. One solution that provides more exposure is the WOCA Museum in the Cryptovoxels Metaverse. This online art gallery displays artwork in virtual NFT exhibitions to make the NFT community a place where womens’ art is valued.
Language Barriers
To be truly global and eliminate the need to be multilingual, we need to enable people to communicate in their own language. Metaverse platforms should include tools to automatically translate a user’s words into the preferred language of other users they are communicating with.
Digital Identities / LGBTQIA+
The Metaverse opens up a world of possibilities, to express how we want to be seen. To design who we really are, not what society decides based on appearance. We need safe spaces where non-binary, transgender or gender-fluid people can feel safe and accepted as their authentic selves in a like-minded community.
Some default choices of clothes and accessories are limited and don’t allow people to show their individuality. We need to adjust how we categorize avatars, clothing and objects, not as male and female but as masculine/feminine/gender-neutral.
People should also have the ability to display their preferred pronouns.
Wearables
Fashion brands are emerging in the NFT space, and digital fashion NFTs with the latest trends are changing how we dress. NYC Digital Fashion Week in February 2022 was a signal of what’s next to come in virtual world economies. These are the next generation of the popular emerging asset known as “skins,” or items of digital apparel that a user’s avatar can wear inside virtual spaces or games.
NFT as fashion is not just another collectible form of commerce; they are reflections of our emerging faith in virtual communities and their distinctive cultures.
Avatar digital wearables are becoming a popular form of ownership, like any physical world fashion purchase. These enable us to express ourselves without the boundaries of the physical world.
Ethics and Standards
Virtual Reality pioneer, Tony Parisi defined 7 Rules that frame the Metaverse, from decades of experience and insights from many practitioners. A Metaverse that does not follow these Rules is not the Metaverse.
There are a set of moral standards by which we all live. An action is deemed ethical if the results are ethical. This differs from people’s morals which are their own. We haven’t managed to agree on a common set of ethical standards for web2.
For web3, the Metaverse Standards Forum leads the way for organisations to cooperate and foster the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive Metaverse. The forum includes members of existing Metaverse standards groups, including the Khronos Group, the W3C, the Open AR Cloud Association, and the Open Geospatial Consortium.
Leading standards organisations and companies cooperate to foster the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive Metaverse.
Bullying/Toxicity
The Metaverse should be different from the real world. An open, public space where people push for human rights and the entire space to be safe. — Sadly, this is not the case. It’s challenging to stop trolls bullying people online. Perhaps we need Metaverse-police! It’s expensive to police the virtual world, so ideally we need the Metaverse to police itself.
So what can we do to protect users?
- We are reasonably good at creating safe spaces for children online, but we need to expand this to other targeted groups
- Users could select a set of permissions deciding whether they want users from other groups to see or interact with their avatar if not in their friends list
- Create a safe area around an avatar, say a 1-metre boundary, so people can’t inappropriately touch their avatar
- Use artificial intelligence tools to detect toxicity in speech
- Hop away from the abusive area
- Report aggressors to moderators
Options to deal with people who break the rules:
- Enable the power to mute offenders with timeouts
- Ban them from the Metaverse area where the breach of the rules occurred
- Liquidate their avatar
- Withhold rewards from their wallet
- Carry out a transaction to debit a fine from their wallet
Business Benefits
In the Metaverse, we’ll log into virtual spaces so realistic it will seem as if we’re physically in the same room.
There are many use cases for organizations to create a presence in the Metaverse:
- Virtual stores
- Storing stock records
- Asset ownership transfer
- Identification and tracking of parts
- Carbon offsetting
- Safety Improvements
- Parts recall
- Intellectual property tracking
- Payments by cryptocurrency
- Navigation systems
- Autonomous vehicles
Virtual Campaigns and Demos
By owning or renting land in the Metaverse, organisations can build hyper-realistic, interactive experiences that truly bring their campaign to life. Enabling customers to discuss service offerings, partake in immersive demos or clarify queries with team members. Engineers could try out new real-world ideas in a safe and affordable virtual environment with no supply constraints.
Virtual Events and Conferences
Beyond basic accessibility, we need systems to be fair and just, ensuring we make the same opportunities available to allow everyone to realize their full potential in hybrid workplaces and social spaces. The ability to reach a wide global audience, while ensuring an interactive and engaging experience could be the perfect combination for many organisations to reach young and old. This also enables the possibility to connect, socialise and network with customers or associates attending a virtual event or conference.
Virtual Stores and Showrooms
In terms of B2C e-commerce, brands can use virtual stores to bridge the gap between online and in-person shopping. Virtual retail offerings can sell both digital and physical goods. The increased level of interaction when browsing can provide a better experience prior to buying and reduces the risk of incorrect purchases.
Including DEIA in your core values in a socially responsible manner is not just the right thing to do; it improves your product and services for all users. This is the primary goal of good design and leads to more revenue and higher profits.
Summary
Blockchain technology can transform the digital world into a new, improved 3D Internet enabling users to interact with products and services, testing things out with the hands-on access that users crave. However, for the Metaverse to thrive, it’s essential that we create it in the right way so different voices and backgrounds are represented. It’s better to think about these rules now, before regulation, to avoid penalties for non-compliance.
So let’s create a well-designed inclusive, and accessible Metaverse where people and community well-being is a priority and everyone is welcome.
For more info on Ettaverse, visit our website and social links https://linktr.ee/ettaverse.
Appendix
Links
Author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charmaine1
Ettaverse: https://linktr.ee/ettaverse
WOCA: https://womenofcrypto.art/
Sources
Blockchain Council: https://www.blockchain-council.org/blockchain/know-everything-about-blockchain-metaverse-and-why-does-it-matter/
Office of Disability Employment Policy: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/about/organizational-chart/assistant-secretary
Dominic Fewster: https://medium.com/@dominic.fewster/how-can-brands-capitalise-on-the-metaverse-bbc16194eb8a
Originally published by Ettaverse Ltd at https://www.linkedin.com on 28th July 2022.
