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Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

I think specialized use cases are an absolute hit on VR devices. Where else can you get consumer priced hardware that you can create a completely custom tuned to the user version without needing custom hardware? That being said I never did manage to find a customized version that was more efficient for the common use case, after all monitors/books/phone screens are already the customized optimized consumer hardware for most people.

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Agreed. I am actually working on making an app that effectively does all of this natively, that is extremely customizable, for both Oculus and SteamVR systems.

You may want to check out SeeingVRToolkit, which was made by Microsoft to make VR accessible to the visually impaired. Retinopsy Look VR utilizes this.

See: https://github.com/microsoft/SeeingVRtoolkit

With Retinopsy VR, reading dense and long material in VR is extremely easy and immersive. I find it far more enjoyable than reading physical books, even without using a screenreader.

I also have ADHD, and reading in VR is far more immersive (and especially with a screen reader utilizing multimodal highlighting). I can learn a lot better because the text is right in my face, being read aloud to me, with changing colors highlighted to the audio, which I cannot escape and drift off from in VR.

Anyways, I do all my coding in VR using Retinopsy VR. It allows me to really buckle down and focus. I sit on the couch reclined and I have my keyboard and mouse on a very stable lap desk, the Couchmaster Cycon 2. I also have headset strap stabilizers/modifiers from Studioform Creative so I can use my headset for several hours.

This was amazing to read thank you for taking the time to discuss all of these VR tools and how they are used. I have a friend in a similar situation who is getting an Oculus Quest 2 soon and this information will be very useful to them.

Best of luck with the app development it sounds fantastic m

You are so welcome!

You have to read this article, which was written by somebody who is visually impaired. He explains why the experience of VR is so much better for people with visual impairments, in so many ways, compared to any other assistive technologies. He states why it is so much more helpful: https://www.alphr.com/virtual-reality/1008932/vr-vision-loss...

There is a visually impaired user who uses the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift. It is the first person on this thread. You may want to investigate their posts: https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/86303/low-v...

Here are all of the big accessibility groups that I know of, for VR: https://udl.berkeley.edu/accessibility/xr-accessibility

There is also a very large (500+ person) VR accessibility group: https://www.meetup.com/a11yvr/

This is an accessibility design podcast for VR: https://xrforlearning.io/podcast/designing-accessibility-int...

This is the Microsoft SeeingVR website, with the open source code and YouTube video: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/seeingvr/

I hope this helps. I have been looking into this recently, and I will need all of these resources for my project.

Those are terrific resources, thank you!

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