# “It’s Just Part of Me:” Understanding Avatar Diversity and Self-presentation
of People with Disabilities in Social Virtual Reality

Kexin Zhang  University of Wisconsin-MadisonMadisonWisconsinUSA
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Elmira Deldari  Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore
CountyBaltimore CountyMarylandUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Zhicong Lu  City
University of Hong KongKowloonHong KongChina<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Yaxing
Yao  Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore CountyBaltimore CountyMarylandUSA
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>and  Yuhang Zhao  University of Wisconsin-
MadisonMadisonWisconsinUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
(2022)

###### Abstract.

In social Virtual Reality (VR), users are embodied in avatars and interact
with other users in a face-to-face manner using avatars as the medium. With
the advent of social VR, people with disabilities (PWD) have shown an
increasing presence on this new social media. With their unique disability
identity, it is not clear how PWD perceive their avatars and whether and how
they prefer to disclose their disability when presenting themselves in social
VR. We fill this gap by exploring PWD’s avatar perception and disability
disclosure preferences in social VR. Our study involved two steps. We first
conducted a systematic review of fifteen popular social VR applications to
evaluate their avatar diversity and accessibility support. We then conducted
an in-depth interview study with 19 participants who had different
disabilities to understand their avatar experiences. Our research revealed a
number of disability disclosure preferences and strategies adopted by PWD
(e.g., reflect selective disabilities, present a capable self). We also
identified several challenges faced by PWD during their avatar customization
process. We discuss the design implications to promote avatar accessibility
and diversity for future social VR platforms.

Social VR, avatar, self-perception, disability disclosure, visual impairments,
d/Deaf and heard of hearing

††journalyear: 2022††copyright: acmcopyright††conference: The 24th
International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility; October
23–26, 2022; Athens, Greece††booktitle: The 24th International ACM SIGACCESS
Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’22), October 23–26, 2022,
Athens, Greece††price: 15.00††doi: 10.1145/3517428.3544829††isbn:
978-1-4503-9258-7/22/10††ccs: Human-centered computing Virtual reality††ccs:
Human-centered computing Accessibility technologies

##  1\. Introduction

With the rising popularity of virtual reality (VR), social VR is becoming the
mainstream of the online social eco-system. Social VR refers to VR platforms
where people communicate and socialize in the form of avatars (Freeman et al.,
2020). One iconic characteristic of social VR is the embodied “face-to-face”
interaction from a first-person perspective through avatars. By customizing
their avatars, users can craft and maintain any characters they prefer in a
virtual world.

Due to the deep embodiment of a user with their avatars, to some degree, a
customized avatar can be considered as a proxy of the user themselves
(Manninen and Kujanpää, 2007). A myriad of research has explored how people
use avatars to shape their self-images in virtual social spaces, including
both PC-based virtual worlds (Kafai et al., 2007) and the more immersive
social VR (Freeman and Maloney, 2021; Freeman et al., 2020). Research has
found that while many people designed their avatars to reflect their physical
appearance in the real world (Martey and Consalvo, 2011), some people
leveraged the opportunity to experiment with different aspects of their
personalities (Fong and Mar, 2015; Ducheneaut et al., 2009) and even explored
completely different identities (Waggoner, 2009). However, most prior works
focused on the self-presentation preferences of people without disabilities.
People with disabilities (PWD), given their unique disability identity, may
have different perceptions and preferences when constructing self-images via
avatars in social VR.

Research on PWD’s self-presentation in social VR is in its infancy. On
traditional social media platforms, PWD have a strong presence and use various
strategies to construct their online images as others do (Wu and Adamic, 2014;
Shpigelman and Gill, 2014). Unlike people with typical abilities, disability
disclosure is a unique perspective that PWD need to consider during self-
presentation. Many PWD are cautious about disclosing their disability-related
vulnerabilities, and some intentionally hide their disability to avoid
potential risks, such as loss of job opportunities (Zhao et al., 2017) and
cyber-bullying (Kowalski et al., 2016). In contrast, some proactively disclose
their disabilities, especially on dating platforms, to build trust and filter
potential partners (Porter et al., 2017). Unlike the 2D text- or image-based
social media, social VR provides a more embodied and immersive experience via
avatars, which can potentially change PWD’s self-presentation preferences and
their willingness to disclose their disabilities. To promote safe and
inclusive social VR experiences for PWD, the accessibility and VR communities
are in need of a thorough understanding of PWD’s avatar perceptions and
disability disclosure preferences on the emerging social VR platforms.

Our research aims to fill the gap by investigating how PWD design and use
their avatars for disability disclosure and self-presentation in social VR.
Given that social VR is an emerging but premature medium that lacks sufficient
accessibility support, we also explore the status quo of avatar diversity and
accessibility on commercial social VR platforms to reveal the barriers faced
by PWD in the avatar customization process. Specifically, we aim to answer the
following research questions:

  * •

RQ1: Whether and how is avatar diversity supported on the mainstream
commercial social VR platforms?

  * •

RQ2: Whether and how do PWD disclose their disabilities when presenting
themselves via avatars?

  * •

RQ3: What challenges do PWD face during the avatar design and creation
process?

To answer these research questions, we first systematically reviewed 15
commercial social VR applications to understand what avatar features are
supported for disability representation. We then conducted in-depth semi-
structured interviews with eight visually impaired people, nine d/Deaf and
hard of hearing people, and two people with multiple disabilities to explore
their avatar perceptions and customization experiences in the social VR
context. Our findings revealed a spectrum of disability disclosure strategies
adopted by PWD for self-presentation, from accurately disclosing one’s
disability, to selectively presenting a particular aspect of the disability,
presenting the changes in one’s ability, to hiding one’s disability to
construct a different self. Our study highlighted the lack of avatar diversity
for disability representation and emphasized PWD’s needs to flexibly control
their disability disclosure in different social contexts. We also identified
the avatar accessibility barriers faced by PWD and suggested design
implications.

This paper makes three contributions. First, to the best of our knowledge,
this is the first research that investigates social VR avatar diversity and
self-presentation from the lens of disability. Second, our research presents
rich and in-depth data to uncover PWD’s different disability disclosure
strategies and preferences. Third, design implications are derived to inspire
a more accessible and inclusive avatar experience for PWD in social VR.

##  2\. Related Work

###  2.1. Self-presentation in Virtual Worlds

Self-presentation, also known as impression management, refers to the ways
that a person “conveys an impression to others which is in his interests to
convey” (Goffman, 1959). Via self-presentation, people can selectively craft,
present, and maintain specific facets of their identities based on different
audiences and social settings (Abrams and Hogg, 2004; Farnham and Churchill,
2011; Kairam et al., 2012; Neustaedter and Fedorovskaya, 2009). A myriad of
research has explored how people manage their identities on social media
(e.g., Facebook, Twitter), revealing the complexity of self-presentation from
various aspects, such as beautified real self on anonymous social platforms
(Zhao et al., 2008; Gibbs et al., 2006; Yurchisin et al., 2005), multiple
online identities for different audience groups (DiMicco and Millen, 2007),
and the stereotypical representation of genders (Bailey et al., 2013).

With the advances in computer graphic technology and hardware support, social
media expands from 2D to 3D avatar-based systems (Freeman and Maloney, 2021).
Instead of using text and images to construct self-image, people can directly
create and personalize an avatar as their virtual representation and manage
the impression from others via the avatar. Many researchers explored users’
digital representations via avatars in PC-based virtual worlds, including both
the game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft (Entertainment, 2021)) and the social
worlds (e.g., Second Life (Lab, 2013)). In the virtual game worlds where a
limited number of pre-defined avatars were provided, many users tended to
select avatars that stood out, followed a trend (Ducheneaut et al., 2009), or
served the role they planned to play in the game (Gee, 2003). In contrast,
social worlds gave users more flexibility to design their own avatars, for
example, by adjusting and customizing different body features (e.g., hair,
eyes, skin color). Without restrictions from the game theme, many users chose
to create avatars that resembled themselves in the real world (Ducheneaut et
al., 2009; Serapis, 2008; Wallace and Maryott, 2009). For example, Ducheneaut
et al. (Ducheneaut et al., 2009) explored users’ avatar customization across
three virtual worlds (i.e., Maple Story, World of Warcraft, and Second Life),
and found that more users preferred reproducing some of their physical
characteristics in the social virtual worlds than in the game worlds. Koles et
al. (Koles and Nagy, 2012) also showed that the majority of users in Second
Life tended to use their physical selves as the starting point to create their
virtual representation.

With the high flexibility in avatar customization, people also have the
freedom to create avatars that are different from their physical appearances,
thus better shaping their online identities. As a result, some people used
avatars to experiment with different aspects of their personalities (Turkle,
1999, 2005; Kafai et al., 2010). For example, Kafai et al. (Kafai et al.,
2010) surveyed 438 tween players in a virtual social community named Whyville
and found that most tweens did not construct their avatar appearances based on
their real selves. Instead, they designed avatars to achieve recognition from
others or to reveal specific aspects of their “real” selves, including those
they desired but could not present in real life. Via avatar creation, users
can even create and explore a completely different identity, such as an avatar
with a different gender (Hussain and Griffiths, 2008) or a different race
(Nakamura, 1995), which may help them discover their true selves and increase
their self-esteem (Bessière et al., 2007).

Most prior work on avatar perception focused on the majority group. Limited
attention has been paid to the self-presentation and identity disclosure of
the under-representative user groups, especially people with disabilities.

###  2.2. Self-disclosure by People with Disabilities in Virtual Worlds

Different from self-presentation where people can construct and present any
images that they prefer to the audience, self-disclosure refers to the act of
revealing any messages about oneself to others (Gibbs et al., 2006; Greene et
al., 2006; Cozby, 1973). While self-disclosure is involved in self-
presentation strategies to help build closer relationships (Schlosser, 2020),
it also poses potential risks of exposing one’s vulnerabilities, especially to
the unknown or anonymous audience online (Ma et al., 2016). Prior research has
explored the online self-disclosure experiences of various under-
representative groups, such as racial minority (Lee, 2014; Lee and Park, 2011;
Higgin, 2009) and gender minority (Buss et al., 2022; Cassell, 1998; Eden et
al., 2010; Morgan et al., 2020). In this section, however, we focus on the
work for people with disabilities (PWD).

Disability disclosure has always been an important topic for PWD even before
social media platforms emerged (Huvelle et al., 1984; Pearson et al., 2003;
Von Schrader et al., 2014; Riddell and Weedon, 2014). Prior research focused
primarily on the physical working context, showing that disability disclosure
could potentially assure appropriate workplace accommodations and increase
workplace diversity and inclusiveness for PWD (Von Schrader et al., 2014).
However, it may also lead to negative employment consequences for PWD, such as
lowered supervisor expectations, isolation from colleagues, and increased
possibility of termination (Huvelle et al., 1984; Pearson et al., 2003).
Because of these, in working or daily living contexts, disability disclosure
is highly contextualized, and influenced by many factors such as employers,
managers, and workplace climate (Von Schrader et al., 2014; Pearson et al.,
2003).

The advent of online social platforms (e.g., social media, social virtual
worlds) affords new forms of social interactions and activities, along with
new social relationships. These online platforms bring PWD more opportunities
to interact with others and get access to resources and communities (Stendal,
2012; Stewart et al., 2010). For example, Boellstorff (Boellstorff, 2019)
built “Ethnographia”, a virtual island in Second Life, to investigate how
digital spaces influenced PWD’s experiences and found that building virtual
worlds enhanced PWD’s sense of ability and helped them reconstruct identities.
With these online social platforms, PWD were able to manage their disability
disclosure, thus achieving a “levelling ground” where they could be treated on
their merits as a person without being shadowed by their disabilities (Bowker
and Tuffin, 2002). However, disability disclosure in online communities can
also bring risks to PWD (Stendal, 2012; Ringland, 2019). For example, Ringland
(Ringland, 2019) conducted a 200-hour observation in Autcraft, an online
community for children with autism, and found that the autistic identity in
virtual worlds could be both a source of empowerment and a source of
harassment and violence.

Researchers have explored PWD’s self-disclosure strategies and preferences in
different online communities (Porter et al., 2017; Gerling et al., 2016;
Ringland, 2019; James Edwards et al., 2021; Boellstorff, 2019). For example,
Porter et al. surveyed 91 adults with and without disabilities to understand
the needs for disability disclosure on online dating platforms. They found a
higher expectation of the disclosure of visible disabilities than invisible
disabilities (Porter et al., 2017). By designing a movement-based virtual game
for young people using wheelchair and exploring their avatar preferences,
Gerling et al. found that while 6 out of 8 participants depicted wheelchairs
as indispensable parts of their self-images, only two participants were
willing to use avatars with mobility disabilities in the game (Gerling et al.,
2016). Recently, Davis and Stanovsek conducted a 3-year ethnography study to
explore how PWD customize their avatars in Second Life and found that many
participants used non-human avatars to free themselves from their visible
disabilities (Davis and Stanovsek, 2021).

Compared to the conventional social media and virtual worlds, the emerging
social VR brings unique embodied experiences, which may potentially affect
PWD’s willingness of disability disclosure. However, little work has
investigated the influence of social VR on PWD’s self-presentation and
disability disclosure preferences.

###  2.3. Avatars Design and Self-presentation in Embodied Social VR

In recent years, social VR has gained increasing attention. Unlike the PC-
based virtual worlds where users see avatars on a 2D screen and can only
control the avatars via a keyboard and a mouse, social VR incorporates full-
body tracking, providing a more embodied first-person avatar experience as
well as richer and more immersive social interactions (Freeman and Maloney,
2021). As a result, social VR provides new affordances for avatar design and
interaction (Hepperle et al., 2021; Menon, 2021; Kolesnichenko et al., 2019;
Waltemate et al., 2018). For instance, Kolesnichenko et al. (Kolesnichenko et
al., 2019) interviewed industry experts who work for different commercial
social VR platforms and uncovered the current avatar design practices from
different aspects, such as locomotion, avatar aesthetics, and avatar’s
relation to one’s virtual identity. Menon (Menon, 2021) also researched the
relationship between avatar customization and embodiment in a virtual job
interview context, highlighting the needs for basic avatar customization.

Some research specifically focused on avatar-based self-presentation in social
VR and how it affected users’ behaviors and interactions (Freeman et al.,
2020; Freeman and Maloney, 2021; Maloney et al., 2020). For example, Freeman
et al. (Freeman and Maloney, 2021) interviewed 30 people about their avatar
perception and social interaction experiences in social VR. They found that
most people considered the avatars to be themselves and strived to make their
avatars similar to their physical appearances. This research also revealed how
avatar genders and race affected people’s experience. For example, female
avatars received better first impression and nicer treatment but also led to
more harassment, and non-white avatars could bring certain social stigma.
Moreover, Maloney and Freeman (Maloney et al., 2020) studied how and why
people disclose their information in social VR. They argued that creating
avatars that look like one’s physical self can disclose important personal
information such as gender, race, and appearance. While this helped build
close connection with others, it can potentially lead to privacy risks.

With more realistic avatars and more embodied interactions, social VR can also
affect PWD’s self-presentation and disability disclosure preferences. Some
researchers have noticed the importance of this research direction.
Boellstorff (Boellstorff, 2019) emphasized the importance of distinguishing
“virtual world” and “virtual reality” for understanding PWD’s avatar
experience. Mott et al. (Mott et al., 2019) also stressed the needs for
supporting more diverse avatar representations for PWD in social VR. However,
to our knowledge, no research has thoroughly explored PWD’s avatar design
experiences in the embodied social VR. Our research contributes to this line
of research by developing a deep understanding of the current avatar diversity
practices, as well as PWD’s self-presentation challenges and strategies in
social VR.

##  3\. Study I: Application Review: Avatar Diversity on Commercial Social VR
Platforms

The goal of this study is to build a comprehensive understanding of the avatar
diversity and accessibility practices on current commercial social VR
platforms (RQ1). Specifically, we aim to uncover 1) the general avatar design
practices: what types of avatars are supported and how users can select or
customize an avatar on different social VR platforms; 2) avatar diversity
support: what avatar features are provided to enable disability disclosure for
PWD; and 3) avatar accessibility: what accessibility features are provided for
PWD to perceive, use, and customize avatars.

###  3.1. Method

We conducted a systematic review of fifteen popular commercial social VR
applications. To determine which social VR applications to review, we
conducted an exhaustive search on three mainstream VR application stores,
including Oculus, Viveport, and Steam. Our search focused on applications
available in the United States in November and December 2021. We first
searched the keyword “social” in these stores and identified a total of 133 VR
applications: 47 from Oculus, 54 from Viveport, and 50 from Steam (18 apps
were available across multiple stores). To further narrow down the scope, we
filtered the applications by checking the application descriptions and only
focused on the applications whose descriptions clearly indicated a social or
collaborative nature.Finally, we excluded VR applications that showed an
intense gaming nature (e.g., sports, shooting games), which can distract users
from socializing, such as EchoVR, StarTrek: Bridge Crew, and SpaceteamVR. We
also consulted other related work and online articles about popular social VR
applications to ensure not missing any mainstream social VR platforms (Liu and
Steed, 2021; XRTODAY, 2022; Alvirmin, 2021). This process resulted in fifteen
social VR applications with strong social nature, including Rec Room, VRChat,
Horizon Worlds, vTime XR, AltspaceVR, Bigscreen, Alcove, Half + Half, Horizon
Venues, Villa, Arthur, ENGAGE, Multiverse, PokestarVR, and Spatial (details
can be found in Table 2 in Appendix).

Two researchers on the team reviewed all applications independently. We
adopted a depth-first traverse strategy, clicking all available buttons and
menu items in the avatar customization process. During the review, researchers
video-recorded and took notes of all avatar options and the interaction
process. The two researchers then discussed their results to ensure the
reliability of the review. Following the same strategy, we reviewed the
general setting in each social VR application to examine what accessibility
features were supported. Any accessibility features that could influence or be
applied to the avatar selection and customization process were documented. All
applications were reviewed with Oculus Quest 2.

###  3.2. Review Results

####  3.2.1. Avatar Creation Methods.

We identified four ways to create and customize avatars in social VR: (1) Full
Avatar Selection: selecting from a set of pre-determined avatars provided by
the system, (2) Avatar Feature Customization: customizing different components
of a human avatar (e.g., eyes, hair styles), (3) Photo-based Avatar
Generation: uploading a photo to the system and generating a corresponding
avatar automatically, and (4) Third-party Avatar Import: designing an avatar
using a third-party platform and uploading it to the social VR application.

Most social VR platforms (12 out of 15) supported Avatar Feature
Customization, allowing users to customize the avatar’s physical features
(e.g., skin tone, body shape, eyes), clothing (e.g., outfits, accessories), or
both. Three platforms (VRChat, Half+Half, and Multiverse) employed the Full
Avatar Selection model. Notably, VRChat offered a set of 80 pre-defined
avatars for users to select and supported various avatar types, including both
humanoid avatars and non-humanoid avatars, such as cartoons, robotic figures,
animals, and objects. VRChat was also the only platform that enabled users to
design and import their own avatars from third-party platforms. Additionally,
three platforms (Villa, Arthur, and Spatial) employed Photo-based Avatar
Generation. Table 2 in Appendix listed the avatar customization methods
supported by different platforms.

Beyond individual applications, the Oculus system provided its own avatar
system (i.e., Meta Avatars) that employed the Avatar Feature Customization
model. When first logged in to an Oculus device, users were automatically
directed to Horizon Home111A virtual home in Oculus Quest 2, which functions
like the homepage of 2D platforms and enables certain social activities
(Rabkin, 2021). to customize their avatars for the whole VR system. Three
platforms–Horizon Worlds, Horizon Venues, Alcove–directly adopted the Meta
Avatars, so that a user could continue using the same avatar from the Oculus
system.

Our review of the avatar customization process confirmed the results from
Kolesnichenko et al.’s work (Kolesnichenko et al., 2019) and further extended
the scope to more widely-used social VR applications.

####  3.2.2. Avatar Realism.

Most social VR platforms provided only humanoid avatars. We investigated the
avatar realism by examining the completeness of the humanoid avatars. We found
that only three platforms–VRChat, vTime XR, and ENGAGE–provided full body
avatars, including head, neck, torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet. All other
12 platforms focused on rendering the upper body of the avatars, presenting at
least the avatars’ head and hands. Specifically, five platforms did not show
the avatars’ arms but only presented flowing hands; avatars in Rec Room and
Bigscreen did not have necks; and Villa’s avatars did not even have a torso.
In terms of avatar rendering details, except for Rec Room, all social VR
platforms we reviewed rendered avatar fingers and tracked the users’ finger
movement via the VR controllers. Table 2 in Appendix provides details of the
avatar realism on all platforms.

####  3.2.3. Disability Representation in Avatars

Our review uncovered the limited avatar diversity support for PWD. We found
that most commercial social VR platforms did not offer any disability-related
avatar features. Meta Avatars was the only avatar system that provided hearing
device features for people who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. Two types of
hearing devices were supported: cochlear implants and hearing aids. A user can
put the hearing device on the avatar via three options: left ear only, right
ear only, and both ears (Fig 1A). This feature was provided under the category
of “Clothing.” However, no other assistive devices or disabilities were
supported. Additionally, we found some “near disability-related” features that
may be used to indicate a disability. Specifically, Bigescreen provided an eye
patch feature under “Glasses” category, which users can add onto their avatars
to present their visual impairments or eye injuries. However, we acknowledge
that this feature might be designed as an eye decoration (e.g., to imitate a
pirate) instead of a disability feature.

Besides disabilities, some applications allowed users to customize wrinkles
and face lines on avatars to reflect age and represent older adults. For
example, Meta Avatars provided five levels of face lines with different depth
and number of wrinkles on avatar’s face to demonstrate different ages. vTime
XR offered four sagging levels for avatars’ facial skin to present age (Fig
1B).

Figure 1. Avatar Diversity: A. Hearing devices in Meta Avatars; B. Sagging
facial skin in vTime XR Avatar.

Fig. 1A. showed Meta Avatars’ seven ways in wearing hearing aids and cochlear
implants. There are seven squares, and each square shows avatar’s one-side ear
of either wearing a hearing device or not. 16 colors are provided at the
bottom of figure for users to customize the color of hearing devices. Fig. 1B.
illustrated a female avatar in vTime XR who looks over age of 50. She is
sitting on a chair and facing forward. Her hair and eyebrows are in color of
white, and she has droopy eyelids and sunk cheeks.

####  3.2.4. Accessibility Features for Avatar Customization

The accessibility features on social VR platforms were limited. While some
platforms supported standard accessibility features that were commonly used on
computer and smartphone interfaces (e.g., magnification, color correction), no
features were designed specifically for avatar customization. Specially,
AltspaceVR allowed users to adjust the scale of the avatar interface. The
Oculus system also provided visual augmentations (i.e., color correction, text
size adjustment) that can be applied to any applications on Oculus devices.
Moreover, most social VR platforms allowed adjustment to the audio and haptic
feedback, which could be helpful for PWD.

By reviewing mainstream social VR platforms, we developed a comprehensive
understanding of the current practices of the avatar design, diversity, and
accessibility. The results of this study inspired and served as a solid
grounding for our following interview study (Study II). First, the review
identified existing disability features for avatars and the social VR
platforms that supported such features, which enabled us to better understand
participants’ social VR experiences and disability disclosure choices in an
in-depth interview. Second, the limited disability features (i.e., hearing
aids, eye patches) identified in this study helped us narrow down the focus to
participants who were visually impaired and deaf or hard of hearing, since
they were the only disability groups that had avatar representations in social
VR.

##  4\. Study II: Interviews: Self-Presentation of People with Disabilities
via Avatars

In this study, we investigated how PWD design and craft their avatars to
disclose their disabilities and present themselves in social VR (RQ2) as well
as their challenges and needs during the avatar creation and customization
process (RQ3).

###  4.1. Method

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 PWD via Zoom in February and
March 2022. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB).

####  4.1.1. Participants

Our recruitment focused on two types of sensory disabilities, (1) d/Deaf or
Hard of Hearings (DHH) people and (2) visually impaired (VI) people, since
they are common and visible disabilities (or disabilities that can be
indicated by visible assistive technologies). Both disabilities can be easily
noticed in the real world and thus can be reflected via avatar design. For
example, blind people may use a white cane, and d/Deaf people may wear hearing
aids or may sign. We recruited 19 participants (11 female, 7 male, and 1
transgender). Their ages ranged from 20 to 58 ($mean=33,SD=11.57$). Among the
participants, eight had visual impairments (V-P1 to V-P8), nine were DHH (H-P1
to H-P9), and two had multiple disabilities (M-P1, M-P2). M-P1 was both blind
and DHH, while M-P2 was blind and had a prosthetic leg. Table 1 shows
participants’ detailed information.

We spread our recruitment information via (1) the mailing lists of non-profit
disability organizations, such as the National Federation of the Blind and
National Association of the Deaf, and (2) mainstream social media platforms,
such as Facebook groups, Twitter, and Instagram. Interested participants could
fill in a screening survey with their age, disability conditions, and general
avatar experiences. Participants were eligible if they were over 18 and had
visual impairments or were d/Deaf or hard of hearing. We limited the
recruitment to individuals who spoke English. If selected to participate,
participants were asked to sign a consent form prior to the interview. Upon
completion, participants received $15 as compensation.

####  4.1.2. Interview protocol

The interview included three phases. The first phase focused on participants’
background information, including demographics (age and gender), self-reported
disability, and experiences with VR and social VR.

The second phase focused on participants’ self-presentation and disability
disclosure via avatars. We first asked participants to send photos of their
avatars or screen share their avatars with us to demonstrate their avatar
design. We asked about how they designed their avatars, why they customized
their avatars in this way, and whether their avatars involved any features to
disclose their disabilities. If the participants disclosed their disabilities
via their avatars, we further asked how they disclosed their disabilities, why
they wanted to do so, and their experience in social VR after they disclosed
disabilities via avatars. If participants’ avatars did not indicate their
disabilities, we asked about their willingness of disclosing their
disabilities via avatars and the reason. Additionally, we asked participants
whether and how they had disclosed their disabilities through any other means
or on any other online social platforms and the rationales. Participants also
discussed whether and how they wanted the social VR platforms to support
disability representations via avatars.

The last phase of the interview focused on avatar creation accessibility. We
asked about participants’ experiences, difficulties, and strategies when
creating and customizing avatars and the types of assistance they needed to
complete the avatar creation process. We also asked about their suggestions
for a more accessible avatar experience.

####  4.1.3. Data recording and analysis

Upon participants’ consent, all 19 interviews were recorded and auto-
transcribed by Zoom. Participants had the option to turn off their cameras
during the interview, although it was not required. Two researchers manually
cleaned all transcripts by checking the recorded interviews.

We conducted thematic analysis (Clarke et al., 2015; Braun and Clarke, 2006)
to identify repetitive patterns and themes in the interviews. First, we
manually organized all qualitative data in an Excel sheet and selected five
representative transcripts (2 DHH participants, 2 VI participants, and 1
participant with multiple disabilities) as samples. Three researchers coded
all samples independently at the sentence level with open coding. Then, they
discussed and reconciled their codes to resolve any differences, and developed
an initial codebook upon agreement. Next, two researchers divided the rest of
the transcripts based on the participants’ disabilities. Specifically, one
researcher analyzed all VI participants’ data (including the two participants
with multiple disabilities) and the other researcher analyzed all DHH
participants’ data. During this process, the two researchers regularly checked
each other’s codes and discussed as needed to ensure consistency. New codes
were added to the codebook based on the agreement between the two researchers.
In the meantime, the third research oversaw all these activities to ensure a
high-level agreement. The final codebook contained over 120 codes. We
categorized all the codes into high-level themes using affinity diagram and
achieved twenty themes.

Table 1. Participants’ demographics and social VR experiences. * indicates avatar platforms demonstrated by our participants. ID |  Age/
Sex |  Self-reported Disability |  Assistive Tech Used |  Social VR
Experience |  Social VR Platforms Used
---|---|---|---|---|---
H-P1 |  52/F |  Profound deaf since birth |  Cochlear implant |  12 months |  VRChat, AltspaceVR, Spatial, Mozilla Hubs, Rec Room, Meta Avatars*
H-P2 |  20/F |  Severe deaf in left ear |  Hearing aid |  Multiple times |  A social VR game, Snapchat*
H-P3 |  20/F |  25% hearing loss in right ear |  Hearing aid |  Tried once |  VR Exhibition at a museum, Snapchat*, Meta Avatars*, Sims*, Memoji*
H-P4 |  23/Trans |  Moderate hearing loss |  Hearing aids |  24 months |  VRChat*
H-P5 |  29/F |  Moderate hearing loss |  Hearing aids |  Multiple times |  VRChat, Rec Room, Snapchat*, Meta Avatars*, Roblox*
H-P6 |  25/M |  Profound deaf |  N/A |  12 months |  VRChat*, SteamVR
H-P7 |  30/M |  Profound deaf |  Cochlear implant |  12 months |  VRChat, Rec Room*, Lost Horizon, Meta Avatars*
H-P8 |  25/M |  Deaf |  Hearing aids |  24 months |  VRChat*, SteamVR
H-P9 |  29/F |  80% hearing loss |  Hearing aids |  Multiple times |  A social VR app to play games with others, Snapchat*
V-P1 |  28/M |  Blind |  White cane |  Few times |  Horizon Series, Meta Avatars*
V-P2 |  31/F |  Residual vision in one eye |  N/A |  2 months |  Cardboard, Meta Avatars*
V-P3 |  26/M |  Loss of side vision |  N/A |  24 months |  BeanVR, Snapchat*
V-P4 |  38/M |  Blind |  White cane, guide dog |  Multiple times |  VRChat, Rec Room, Oculus Venues, Xbox*
V-P5 |  32/F |  Only have vision in one eye |  White cane, guide dog |  N/A |  Snapchat*
V-P6 |  25/F |  Blind |  White cane |  N/A |  Twitter avatar*
V-P7 |  49/F |  Blind |  White cane |  Multiple times |  A social VR app with educational purpose, several social VR games, Meta Avatars*
V-P8 |  53/F |  peripheral vision loss |  White cane, guide dog |  N/A |  Meta Avatars*
M-P1 |  58/F |  Blind since birth; hearing disability since recently |  Hearing aids, white cane, guide dog |  Few months |  A social VR app for education, Meta Avatars*
M-P2 |  38/M |  Blind; has a prosthetic leg |  White cane |  Multiple times |  Rec Room*

###  4.2. Findings

####  4.2.1. Experience with Avatars and Social VR Platforms

Sixteen out of 19 participants had social VR experiences. In general, we found
that DHH participants had a richer experience with social VR avatars than VI
participants. Except for H-P3, all DHH participants had used social VR
multiple times. Five DHH participants were frequent users with experiences of
more than a year. In contrast, VI participants had limited social VR
experience, with most of them only trying it a few times. Three VI
participants did not have social VR experience, but they used avatars on
conventional social media, such as Snapchat Bitmoji and Meta Avatars for
Instagram. Several VI participants mentioned that they attempted to customize
their avatars on social VR several times but were blocked when setting up an
account. We report the accessibility challenges faced by participants in
Section 4.2.5.

The two most commonly used social VR platforms by our participants were VRChat
(7 participants) and Rec Room (5). Most participants used social VR via head-
mounted VR devices and the most commonly used devices were Oculus Quest,
Oculus Rift, and Valve Index. However, three participants (H-P1, V-P2, V-P6)
preferred using desktop-based social VR due to the accessibility issues of VR
devices.

Participants used social VR for multiple reasons. Most participants used
social VR to communicate with friends (7 participants) and play games (6).
H-P4 specifically wanted to know other DHH people and connect with DHH
community in social VR. Six participants used social platforms for
professional purposes, such as hosting VR meetups (H-P1), promoting rights for
PWDs as accessibility activists (H-P1), and using social VR as an education
platform (e.g., M-P1, V-P7, H-P4). Notably, three participants (H-P4, H-P6,
H-P8) used social VR for American Sign Language (ASL) education. They learned
or taught ASL in a VRChat community called “Helping Hands” (Wiki, 2022), which
was a community for DHH people to communicate via sign language (see details
about ASL in VR in Section 4.2.4).

####  4.2.2. Disability Disclosure via Avatars

Our study indicated that disability disclosure via avatars was an essential
strategy of self-presentation for PWD. We identified participants’ different
disability disclosure preferences in social VR.

Reflect one’s physical self. The majority of our participants (17 out of 19)
designed avatars to reflect their physical appearances in real life, including
both facial features and outfits. Some participants even hoped to craft the
fine details (e.g., makeup, accessories) of the avatars to show their daily
styles, habits, and values in real life.

As part of their physical appearance, eight participants (e.g., H-P3, H-P7,
V-P1) expressed their willingness to disclose their disability via their
avatars since they believed that the disability “is part of me” (H-P3). As
H-P7 indicated, “I have [a cochlear implant] on [my avatar] all the time
really, just because that’s what I do in real life. I like my avatar to
represent me as realistic as possible or as close to [myself], so if I have a
cochlear implant I’m not ashamed of it.” Two participants (M-P1, H-P8)
specifically emphasized that when they disclosed their disabilities on social
platforms, they never aimed to highlight their disability since the disability
was just like other physical features, such as hairstyle, skin color, and
gender. As M-P1 stated, “Because that’s who I am. I don’t see any reason to
not disclose [my disability]. It’s a part of who I am. And I wouldn’t like try
to pretend that I was a different race or try to pretend that I was not female
cisgender kind of person, so I wouldn’t pretend that I didn’t have a
disability.”

Interestingly, although most participants wanted their avatars to reflect
their physical selves as much as possible, H-P2 did not want the details to be
completely the same: “I just tried to make it look kind of like me, but not
too much like me, because it’s kind of creepy when they look like twins. [The
avatars] don’t ever look completely like you, especially the hair, you cannot
replicate someone’s hair [with the current VR technology].” With the
limitation of current avatar realism and the Uncanny Valley effect222Uncanny
Valley effect refers to viewer’s increased eerie feelings when an entity looks
highly human-like (Hepperle et al., 2020). , she discussed the boundary
between the physical self in real life and the virtual image presented by
avatars in the virtual world: “I don’t want [avatars] to be too much like me,
because it’s not real life. Don’t try to make it be real life when it’s not
like [real life].”

Reflect one’s physical self with selective disabilities. Unlike most
participants who preferred disclosing their disabilities entirely, M-P1
selectively disclosed her disability. M-P1 experienced both visual and hearing
loss, and she decided which disability to disclose based on the visibility of
the disabilities. She used both a white cane and hearing aids in the real
life. However, she would only add a white cane to her avatar to signify her
visual impairments but not disclose her hearing loss. This is because hearing
aids were not visible to people in the real world in most cases.
Interestingly, M-P1’s consideration of disability visibility was to fulfill
the expectation of the audience, specifically people who knew her in real
life. As she explained,

“I do use hearing aids, but I don’t think that they are visible particularly…
so I was like, well I am not going to add a hearing aid, because a lot of
people probably don’t even know that I use [hearing aids], because I don’t
think they’re that visible, whereas people would know that I use a cane. I was
trying to make [my avatar] look like me, and I think that if I had hearing
aids, a lot of people would be like, why do you have hearing aids, so why did
you do that.”

Moreover, M-P1’s experience with different disabilities also influenced her
choice of disability disclosure. She preferred to disclose only the “dominant
disability” that can represent her most: “I have had the hearing disability
for a lot less time than the [blindness], I mean I’ve been blind all my life,
so pretty like used to [blindness]. I think that maybe if I had grown up hard
of hearing or deaf that would be more important to represent for me.”

Reflect changes of the physical self. Notably, participants who experienced
acquired and progressive disabilities mentioned that they wanted to use their
avatars to reflect their physical changes and inform people about their
current abilities. For example, H-P2, who suddenly experienced one-side
hearing loss at the age of 20, emphasized her need to inform people of her
current hearing ability via her avatar: “Because people don’t know [my
acquired disability], especially when [my hearing loss] happens so suddenly to
me. Literally people are like ‘Oh, you can still hear out with one ear, you’re
just fine.’ But it’s like, I have no ability to locate a noise. When there’s
any sort of background noise, I can’t hear anything that you say. The whole
world is just like quieter. People don’t realize that.”

Present a capable self. Uniquely for PWD, some participants wanted to present
a capable self via avatars, demonstrating that they were as capable as people
without disabilities in accomplishing tasks. However, participants employed
divergent strategies to present their capabilities.

Four participants (H-P4, V-P3, V-P4, M-P2) chose to hide their disabilities in
avatars, so that their disabilities would not bias others and overshadow their
capability in social interactions. For example, V-P3, who played multiplayer
games in BeanVR, preferred not to disclos his visual disability, because he
was afraid of being judged as a weak player. As V-P3 described, “Sometimes
there are challenges, when you are trying to make friends, people may like
disregard your friend request because [your] visual impairment. Sometimes you
have to keep it a secret. I was like looking for teammate on BeanVR, so that
you can join a game, nobody wanted to be my teammates at the end because maybe
my weakness.”

Reversely, some participants (V-P1,V-P5) crafted their avatars to show their
disabilities and used them as a way to prove their capability and independence
in using this new technology. As V-P1 said: “I see that avatar can be a symbol
of hope, a symbol of I can do this. For me, disability is not the end. I like
to overcome my disability and show others that I can overcome it. I’ve thought
of ways to overcome every obstacle. So, by [customizing my avatars], [I show
that] every person with disability can become independent.”

Present a professional self for disability education and awareness. Nine
participants (4 DHH and 4 VI participants, and M-P1) disclosed their
disabilities to trigger conversations and educate the public about disability
and equity. As H-P7 expressed, “I think if people notice [the disability
feature of my avatar], it can spark an interesting discussion about oh look
they’re wearing a cochlear implant, what is that.” H-P1 further emphasized the
importance of educating people about DHH people: “Avatars [with disabilities]
were kind of cool, because that’s me educating people that deafness is a
spectrum, we don’t offer in buckets.”

V-P7 shared her disability to advocate for social justice. As V-P7 said, “Part
of the reason [of disclosing my disability] is that, I am an advocate for
social justice and all marginalized communities, and so I want people to know
that I am an ally, and I am here to support and work for equitable
opportunities for all individuals regardless of what their different diversity
might be, and so having my disability out there on social media gives people a
little more insight into me as a person.”

Disclose disability selectively based on social contexts. Some participants
decided whether to disclose their disabilities based on specific social
circumstances. Seven participants (three DHH and four VI participants)
considered the audience. Some preferred disclosing their disabilities only to
the audience who they knew in real life. For example, H-P1 did not want to
disclose her disability to random strangers in social VR: “I think the only
situation I can think of where I may not disclose is when there are other
strangers, too many strangers. In a setting where you can just show up, and a
stranger can come run after you, I would not want to [disclose my
disability].”

V-P2 emphasized that disability was her privacy. She would not share
information about her disability on every occasion. Instead, she would assess
the situation and audience, then make the decision accordingly. As she
indicated, “Well, in general, I am a private person. I don’t like too many
people knowing about my disability, because they haven’t been through what
I’ve been through, they judge before they even know. I am a really sensitive
person, so somebody says that to me may not be hurtful to them, [but hurtful
to me].”

Present a different self that is not defined by disability. While the majority
of participants were willing to disclose their disabilities via avatars, three
participants (H-P4, V-P4, and M-P2) held the opposite attitudes. H-P4
preferred not disclosing her disability at all because she did not want her
disability to become her representative identity and to overshadow her
personality when socializing with others: “I don’t like to disclose [my
disability], because I don’t want that to be the initial impression that
people have, that this person is deaf. I just don’t feel a need to say
anything unless I have to. Because it might just be a personal thing, and I
just don’t want that to be characteristically associated. It’s not a bad
thing. But I’ve been that way (not disclosing disability unless necessary) all
my life, not just in VR.”

Moreover, some participants (H-P4, V-P4, and M-P2) viewed social VR as a world
where they can express themselves freely and explore an ideal self that was
different from the real world. As V-P4 said, “Because I feel like in virtual
reality, your disability really shouldn’t matter because it’s virtual reality.
And virtual reality you’re not hampered or hindered or shouldn’t be any way.
So my case of blindness, plus a prosthetic leg, should not hold me back in
virtual reality.”

####  4.2.3. Avatar Customization for Disability Disclosure.

While most participants indicated a strong desire to be able to show their
disabilities via avatar design, they experienced various difficulties in
practicing disability disclosure via avatars. In this section, we reveal
participants’ challenges in disability disclosure via avatars, the strategies
they adopted, and their desired features to support disability representation.

Challenges in disclosing disability via avatars. We identified four main
challenges that participants encountered when disclosing disability via
avatars.

First, almost all participants (18 out of 19) complained about the lack of
disability representations in avatar design. Seven participants mentioned not
knowing or not being able to find any avatar features that represent
disabilities on the social platforms they used. While some platforms support
limited disability features (e.g., hearing aids and cochlear implants in Meta
Avatars), the choices and customization options were limited. For example,
H-P2 mentioned that Snapchat only provided hearing aids for avatars, but
people who used cochlear implants did not want to use them to represent their
disabilities. Due to the lack of disability features, V-P5 used regular avatar
decorations (i.e., sunglasses) to present her low vision. However, it cannot
clearly signify her disability since people without disabilities also use it.
As V-P5 said, “My avatar has sunglasses [since I’m light sensitive], but this
doesn’t really make sense because anybody can wear sunglasses. I honestly do
wish that there is more representation of people with disabilities.”

V-P4 further emphasized the importance of avatar diversity for disabilities by
comparing it to other minority groups, “I think it’s a very good idea to have
[disability-related] features, I might even use them. Everyone’s talking about
diversity and it’s all about race and gender. But one common thing that gets
left out is disability. I think that you should have the option to represent,
whether you want to use that or not it’s up to you, but it never hurts to
have.”

Second, current disability signifiers for avatars were not always compatible
with other avatar features. For example, H-P1 tried to put a cochlear implant
on her avatar but ended up not using it since it was blocked by the avatar’s
hair: “The [Meta Avatars] do have a cochlear implant you can add. But you
can’t see it, because my hair kind of covered it. I tried to spare [the hair]
in a pony tail to see if you could see the cochlear implants. But you
couldn’t, so I put it back down.”

Moreover, the unrealistic size of the virtual hearing devices also prevented
participants from applying them to their avatars. H-P5 explained her
experience in Roblox: “The hearing aids are larger than the character, so if
you try to put them on, it’s seriously like trying to put Barbie clothes on
like a Little Tikes doll. They’re just wrong, they’re just floating.”

Methods of disclosing disabilities via avatars. Participants mostly disclosed
their disabilities by accessorizing their avatars with the assistive devices
they used in real life. Three DHH participants added cochlear implants or
hearing aids to their avatars (H-P1 and H-P7 on Meta Avatars, H-P3 on
Snapchat). For VI participants, there were no avatar features designed to
represent visual impairments on current social VR platforms. Two VI
participants (V-P2 and V-P5) thus put dark glasses on their avatars to signify
their visual impairments. “My avatar has sunglasses because when I go out, I
always have sunglasses with me, because I’m light sensitive. So that is why my
avatar is wearing sunglasses.” (V-P5).

Moreover, P-H6 added an ID badge and a mini-status to his avatars to indicate
his disability. As he described, “You can make your own ID badge to explain
that you’re Deaf or/and Hard of Hearing and have it on your avatar so you can
let anyone read it and learn about you. And plus I have a little mini status
that would show above my avatar head [if you enabled it in the menu], it’ll
say ‘I’m Deaf :D.”’ (Fig. 2A)

Figure 2. A. H-P6’s mini-status in VRChat; B. H-P6’s sign avatar with black-
outlined hands and ID Badge

Fig. 2A. showed H-P6’s profile interface in VRChat. The left side of the
figure showed a picture of his avatar, and the right side displays his
information of user name “H-P6”, mini status of “I’m Deaf :D” with a small
circular green icon, the identity of “user”, and profile information which
said “Deaf Player :D, member of Helping Hands community, ASL volunteer” and
other information about friend request. Fig. 2B. displays H-P6’s full body
avatar in VRChat, who is a male figure with yellow hair and pale skin and
wearing a black suite. He is standing facing forward 45 degrees to the right.
He has an ID Badge on his left arm, which looks like an arm band badge.

Alternative approaches to disclosing disabilities. Besides avatars,
participants (nine VI and seven DHH participants) used other methods, such as
bio, posts, photos, emoji, and YouTube videos, to present their disabilities
on social media.

Compared to the 2D social platforms, we found that many participants (six DHH
and two VI) were more willing to disclose their disabilities via 3D avatars in
social VR. The embodied experience made participants feel more comfortable
disclosing their disabilities. In contrast, some participants (H-P4, H-P5)
felt that expressing their disabilities in a less embodied way (e.g., via text
on social media) was highlighting their disabilities rather than representing
themselves. As H-P5 noted, “The hearing aids are physical reality for me, so I
just have them on [my avatar]. I wouldn’t want to put it in text. I wouldn’t
want it to be [highlighted]. While [the hearing aid] is visible it feels more
subtle [than disclosing my disability in text].” Meanwhile, some participants
felt that the visual presentation of avatars was more noticeable than in other
mediums. For example, H-P2 claimed that avatar would be ”the first thing” that
people see, and H-P7 added that “it’s the easiest way of [disclosing my
disability]. I don’t think I would put it in like text information like oh I’m
deaf. Because I think most of the time well, probably no one reads it.”

In addition, H-P7 considered social VR to be a safer place to disclose
disability since he could easily move away from toxic conversations. As he
indicated, “the freedom of moving around [with avatars] makes you get the
power to walk away [from offensive comments], you have a bit of control that
you wouldn’t have in social media.”

However, some VI participants preferred using text-based methods to disclose
their disabilities other than avatars since avatars were visual and not
accessible. For instance, V-P7 wrote posts or articles to reveal her
disability to the public. Five VI participants also used emojis (e.g., ) in
their posts to present their disabilities. For instance, M-P1 utilized
disability-related emojis in her everyday communications. As she mentioned,
“Well, I didn’t create [the emoji], but I like that [they] are already on the
iPhone. There is a person with a white cane or whatever. I have used those
before to represent me, if I’m writing something, posting a message, or
something.”

Desired Disability Representations in Avatar Design. Participants suggested
various ways to facilitate disability representation in avatars. Most
participants hoped that avatar interfaces could include more assistive devices
for PWD (e.g., prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, white cane). While some
platforms already provided hearing aids and cochlear implants, DHH
participants wanted more options that present different details. For example,
they wanted hearing aids with different colors, brands, and wearing methods
(e.g., one side and both sides), so that users can freely choose their
preferred appearance of assistive devices and feel more realistic. For VI
participants, two main desired features were the white cane and guide dog,
which were commonly used by VI people in real life. Beyond simply
incorporating assistive devices, participants also expressed the need to
communicate their personalities through the assistive devices they used. Two
participants (V-P1 and V-P6) desired to decorate their avatars’ canes. As V-P6
explained, “[The cane] not only ties in with my disability, but like my
person-hood as well around and through that disability.” Moreover, M-P1 who
used Braille wished to have jewelry with Braille on it, which represented “her
culture as a person with a disability.”

Besides accessories, H-P1 emphasized the need for a customizable avatar body
to accurately reflect PWD’s physical appearance, including their disabilities.
She used the Helen Keller doll as an example, “When the Helen Keller doll came
out, Haben Girma, who’s a very famous blind person, was not happy with that
because [the doll’s] eyes were proportional. They were the same. But Helen
Keller in real life, her eyes are not. I mean, even Haben’s eyes are not
perfectly proportioned. So maybe that would be something worth improving, is
to give people the ability to customize the eyes differently. Some people may
want to be as accurate as possible.”

However, one participant (H-P8) did not support providing disability features
for avatars. He was concerned that these features could be abused by people
without disabilities and suggested verifying the authenticity of one’s
disability before a user achieves access to these features. As he described,
“From my experience in VRChat, there are a lot of people who have faked
disabilities. Do not trust anyone even your new online friends that you have
met recently. I don’t think it’s necessary to show any disabilities on the
avatars. People have to show proof that they truly have disabilities. For
example, I won’t hold back and sign fast as possible to fake deaf people. They
will suddenly show their ugly true colors.”

####  4.2.4. Specialized avatars and VR-ASL for the Deaf community.

Notably, three people in the Deaf community333The Deaf community “views
themselves as a unique cultural and linguistic minority who use sign language
as their primary language” (Center, 2021). (H-P4, H-P6, H-P8) reported using
specialized avatars to sign in social VR, specifically in VRChat (Fig. 2B).
All three participants were members of the “Helping Hands” community in
VRChat, where they were either learning or teaching American Sign Language
(ASL). Instead of typical ASL, they used VR-ASL, a simplified version of ASL
in VR (Fig. 3). We report participants’ experiences with the specialized
avatars and VR-ASL.

VR-ASL. ASL in real life involved rich movements of fingers, body gestures,
and facial expressions. However, not all signs can be recognized in VR due to
its limited tracking capabilities. Thus, Deaf users simplified or adjusted
some signs so that they could be captured by the current VR controllers, which
resulted in VR-ASL (Fig. 3A). It is worth noting that all three participants
who used VR-ASL adopted the Valve Index Knuckles Controllers, which can
capture more hand gestures and finger movements than other VR controllers
(INDEX, 2022).

Specialized sign avatars. To enable people to better perceive the signs,
participants used specialized sign avatars in VRChat. The sign avatars had
three unique characteristics. First, their hands usually had a high contrast
skin color to the avatars’ clothes, which increased the visibility of the hand
gestures. As H-P4 mentioned, “Oftentimes, people who use sign language, if
their [avatar] skin is white, it’s easier to see and contrast [with dark
shirts color], so that helps people visually understand what you’re saying.”
Second, many sign avatars had black outlined hands to further enhance their
visibility (Fig. 2B). Last, sign avatars were re-programmed to support richer
gestures, so that users can conduct more sophisticated signs in social VR (see
the creation of specialized avatars in Section 4.2.4). For example, H-P4’s
avatar can perform the hand gesture that signified the letter “y” in ASL (Fig.
3B), while with the same controller input, typical avatars would only pose a
“rock and roll” gesture (Fig. 3C) that did not represent any sign letters.

Figure 3. A. Signing the alphabet using ASL vs. VR-ASL; B. H-P4’s avatar
signing “y” hand; C. the “Rock and Roll” gesture; D. Warehouse with sign
avatars created by “A9”.

Fig. 3A. illustrates a female avatar signing alphabet “A” in VR-ASL. To the
right of the avatar, a hand gesture that shows how to sign “A” in ASL is
displayed. These two figures are put in a square to demonstrate the difference
between signing “A” in ASL and VR-ASL. This figure contains six such squares
to show the difference in signing six alphabets. Fig. 3B. illustrates H-P4’s
avatar signs alphabet “Y” in VRChat by holding both hands, palm facing out,
with thumb and pinkie finger sticking out and the rest of fingers curled in.
Fig. 3C. displays an avatar’s left hand in VRChat, with index finger up,
middle fingers down, pinky up, and thumb in, which represents a standard “rock
and roll” gesture. Fig. 3D. displays the place that contains many avatars
designed especially for signing

Figure 4. Creation of specialized sign avatars: A. Oculus Hand Chart; B. Unity
interface in modifying hand gestures

Fig. 5A. illustrates seven gestures with oculus controllers inputs, with the
explanation of how to do the gestures. Fig 5B. Illustrates a tree diagram with
gesture layers to customize the oculus controllers inputs

Creation of specialized sign avatars. Participants used different ways to
acquire, create, and customize sign avatars. H-P4 usually imported the
publicly available avatars in VRChat into Unity and re-programmed them to
support more hand gestures. H-P4 explained the detailed process of her avatar
augmentation in Unity: “I was using custom animations, and I was able to
modify the controller inputs to play animations, like I might be able to do
‘e’ hand or flat ‘o’ hand, otherwise you won’t be able to have it. Here is a
little chart with all the different combinations you can do (Fig. 4A), and I
was able to modify the game to which I can have access to even more [gestures]
with the combination.” H-P8 also modified the avatars in VRChat, but he asked
his friends to do it for him due to technical barriers (see Section 4.2.5).

Instead of creating his own avatars, as a teacher who taught VR-ASL in Helping
Hands, H-P6 received his avatars as a gift from “A9,” a professional creator
of sign avatars. A9 owned a warehouse in VRChat, showcasing all the sign
avatars he created for VR-ASL (Fig. 3D). Members in Helping Hands can choose
sign avatars from his warehouse.

Unique disability disclosure via sign avatars. All three participants who used
VR-ASL preferred not using any hearing devices on their avatars, because these
assistive devices can not distinguish Deaf people from deaf or hard of
hearings people. Instead, the best way to present the Deaf culture was to sign
via their avatars. As such, the sign avatars and the use of VR-ASL became a
unique way of disability disclosure for Deaf people. As H-P6 explained, “I can
convey and gesture [my disability] to anyone I meet, ‘Sorry, me deaf, me sign’
and they get the gist just fine anyway.”

####  4.2.5. Avatar Creation and Accessibility

Avatar creation and customization posed barriers to some participants,
especially those with visual impairments. We describe the different challenges
DHH and VI participants faced.

Barriers to DHH people. For DHH participants, the avatar customization
interface in social VR was accessible and easy to use. Six DHH participants
reflected that they did not encounter any difficulties because all avatar
features and customization steps were visual and rarely involved any audio
information.

However, the major challenge occurred when creating the specialized sign
avatars with third-party platforms since it required programming skills
(Section 4.2.4). Both H-P4 and H-P8 reported experiencing technical issues and
highlighted the lack of support in solving the issues. As H-P4 emphasized, “Oh
so many times, you don’t even want to believe, it’s always difficult because
when the issue is about avatar creation, as of now is that there isn’t a lot
of resources about it. There isn’t a lot of tutorials that are either very
relevant or high quality for creating avatars. So that has a lot to be
progressed. That’s like my biggest issue. I don’t know how to do something.”

Although some third-party platforms offered tutorials for avatar
customization, most tutorials focused on audio instructions and were not
accessible to DHH users. As H-P6 complained, “I think there were some visual
examples and others, which was very helpful to learn about, but for most of it
was about audio stuff which I, unfortunately, can’t hear them. I feel like
they haven’t thought this out very well.”

Barriers to VI people. Unlike DHH participants, VI participants faced more
significant challenges when creating avatars and using VR platforms in
general. Without the support of a screen reader, VR was not accessible at all
to blind users. For example, M-P2 purchased an Oculus Quest but decided to
abandon it due to accessibility issues. As he explained, “I have tried, the
Oculus Quest, totally inaccessible, because it does not speak. I see it has no
screen reading functionality in it. Because I have absolutely no use for this
thing unless Meta includes screen reading technology and text-to-speech
technology in this. Still, it’s sitting in my closet in its original box, it’s
never even been opened.”

For low vision participants, similar to Zhao et al.’s results (Zhao et al.,
2019), we found that information readability was a big challenge. The text on
some avatar interfaces was too small. Moreover, some interfaces appeared at a
fixed distance, preventing users from getting close to see. As V-P4 said, “For
avatar creation, they’ll use that sort of flat screen style interface, but
then the texts are not large enough, well then you either guess, or you just
don’t interact with it. So that’s where the problem is.”

Avatar creation on social media. Compared to VR, avatar creation on
conventional social media was more accessible to VI participants since
participants can access the interface with their phone or computer that
incorporated a screen reader. Seven VI participants had experience creating
avatars on social media, such as Instagram and SnapChat. However, VI
participants still faced various challenges.

The biggest issue was the lack of sufficient descriptions across the whole
avatar design process. When designing avatars, participants (e.g., V-P1, V-P7)
had difficulty understanding each avatar feature, tracking their design
progress, and confirming the final outcome. Without suitable descriptions and
notifications, the avatars created by VI participants (e.g., V-P7, V-P8) did
not match their desired avatar appearances. As V-P7 indicated, “Meta has a
little bit of description, but not everything has a description. So the first
[avatar] I made, [my friends] said it was terrible, didn’t look anything like
me. I didn’t choose the right face, I didn’t choose the right color skin tone.
People told me the outfit I chose was ugly. I didn’t get a lot of positive
feedback.” Since participants could not see and confirm the final look of
their avatars, they did not build strong connections with the avatars, thus
not caring much about their avatars: “When I was designing [my avatar], I did
have to have my daughter help. It wasn’t very accessible and so really it
doesn’t mean a lot to me because I’m not completely invested in it, because I
can’t confirm that I like it” (V-P7).

Moreover, the avatar customization interfaces usually offered a long list of
options, which was difficult for VI users to navigate with screen readers. As
V-P6 said, “I think there were so many buttons to flick through, for example,
I would choose my hair color and it will be like 60 of them. Those processes
[pose] accessibility hazards. I am good with technology, but I think that
someone who was not so good with technology would get really overwhelmed with
that.”

##  5\. Discussion

Our research has contributed the first exploration of avatar diversity and
PWD’s self-presentation in social VR. We answer the three research questions
proposed in the Introduction. Firstly, our systematic review in Study I
highlighted the lack of disability representation in avatar design on the
mainstream social VR platforms. Only the Meta Avatars (and the platforms that
adopted the Meta Avatars) provided disability-related features, but the
features were restricted to DHH people (RQ1). Secondly, our in-depth
interviews in Study II indicated that PWD employed a spectrum of self-
presentation strategies via avatars in social VR (see details in Section 5.1),
and the majority of them showed strong preferences in disclosing their
disabilities via avatars by adding the assistive tools they used in real life
(RQ2). We also uncovered the major differences between DHH and VI participants
in avatar perception (Section 5.2). Lastly, the avatar creation and
customization process posed barriers to PWD, especially for VI participants
(RQ3). In this section, we discuss the unique self-presentation strategies of
PWD from the lens of disability disclosure, the avatar perception differences
between DHH and VI users, and the design considerations we derive to inspire
more accessible and inclusive avatar design.

###  5.1. Disability Disclosure via Avatars in Social VR

Our research identified some similar self-presentation patterns observed in
people without disabilities. We confirmed that most people regarded the
embodied avatars as themselves and designed avatars to reflect their physical
selves (Freeman and Maloney, 2021), and people may want their avatars to
reveal a different self in online games other than their physical selves
(Kafai et al., 2010).

Beyond the insights from prior research, our research uncovered PWD’s unique
avatar perceptions and self-presentation strategies in social VR. We found
that PWD managed their disability disclosure to craft their self-images in
social VR. Instead of a binary switch between disclosing and not disclosing
(Davis and Stanovsek, 2021), PWD adopted a spectrum of strategies to determine
to what extent and from what aspect they would like to disclose their
disability to shape their avatar figures. Some participants saw disability as
part of their physical selves and wanted to reflect their disability as
accurately as possible; some selectively disclosed a certain aspect of their
disabilities (e.g., the more visible disability, or the disability with
stronger personal attachment) to signify their major disability identity; and
some participants with acquired or progressive disabilities employed avatars
as a nuanced way to indicate their ability changes. Moreover, PWD disclosed
their disabilities via avatars to convey certain signals to the audience. For
example, some participants designed avatars with disability features to
demonstrate their capability and independence, while some participants used
their avatars to increase disability awareness and advocate for diversity and
equity. These patterns demonstrated the importance of disability disclosure
for PWD in self-presentation, suggesting the necessity of granting PWD
sufficient flexibility to control their disability disclosure in the avatar
creation process.

Our research also highlighted PWD’s different disability disclosure
preferences from other online social platforms (e.g., social media, virtual
worlds). While avatars were also supported in some 2D/desktop-based social
platforms (e.g., Instagram, Second Life), PWD generally did not feel attached
to their avatars due to the lack of embodiment, and many tended to hide their
disabilities by using non-human avatars (Stendal et al., 2012; Davis and
Stanovsek, 2021). In contrast, our study suggested that the embodied nature of
social VR enabled people to build strong attachment with their avatars, making
them more willing to reflect their disabilities in their avatars. Some
participants (H-P4, H-P5) mentioned that they did not want to disclose their
disabilities on social media since it felt like “showing off” their
disabilities, but displaying their disabilities via avatars in social VR were
more natural. The support of embodied interaction further enhanced PWD’s
engagement and attachment. Our Deaf participants can thus communicate with
their preferred manner in real life—ASL, and they even created VR-ASL to
accommodate to the limited capability of current VR technology. Our findings
echoed the Embodied Social Presence Theory (Mennecke et al., 2010) that the
embodied avatars and the shared virtual space and activities can affect user
perception and bring them to a higher engagement level, and further expanded
this theory by providing evidences from the disability perspective.

###  5.2. Avatar Perception of People with Different Disabilities

Our findings uncovered DHH and VI people’s different avatar experience and
perception. Given the visual-driven nature of current VR technology, it is not
surprising that VI people face tremendously more challenges than DHH people
when designing and using avatars. Our study showed that DHH users had much
more substantive avatar experiences than VI users. DHH users already started
forming communities in social VR (e.g.,“Helping Hands”), whereas the majority
of VI participants only tried social VR for a few times. Due to the distinct
avatar experiences, DHH and VI people perceived avatars differently. Since VI
users cannot see or even imagine the appearances of their avatars, they had
weak attachment with their avatars and some ended up not caring about their
avatars at all in social VR. As V-P4 said, “[Avatar design] really is just for
fun, I mean it’s just kind of seeing what types of appearances, or what types
of features that the avatars have. I really don’t necessarily care about
avatars all that much.” In contrast, DHH people showed stronger attachment
with their avatars and spent more effort customizing, specializing, and even
re-programming their avatars for better self-presentation and communication.

While this research focused only on DHH and VI users, our findings indicated
that people with different disabilities may have different avatar perception
and self-presentation preferences. For example, compared to people who have
visible disabilities (e.g., a person with an amputation) or who use apparent
assistive technologies (e.g., a VI person who has a cane), people with
invisible conditions and using invisible assistive technologies (e.g., a
person who experiences chronic pain and uses a trigger tracker) may be more
reluctant to disclose their disabilities in social VR. Future research should
consider other disabilities and explore different factors that may affect
people’s disability disclosure decisions, such as visibility of disability and
visibility of assistive technology (Faucett et al., 2017).

###  5.3. Design Implications for Avatar Diversity and Accessibility

####  5.3.1. Avatar Diversity

We drew three design implications to promote disability representations for
avatars.

Offer more assistive device representations. Most participants saw their
assistive devices as the key signifier of their disabilities and preferred
adding these devices to their avatars for disability representation.
Participants suggested various commonly-used assistive technologies that can
represent their disabilities, including a white cane and guide dog for VI
people, cochlear implants and hearing devices for DHH people, and prosthetic
limbs, wheelchair, and walking aids for people with motor disabilities.
Besides the basic assistive technology representations, participants wanted to
further personalize their virtual assistive devices to reflect their
aesthetics and personalities, for example, customizing the color and the
brand. Adding these features in the mainstream avatar systems would empower
PWD to express and present themselves freely and equally in social VR.
Designers should involve PWD throughout the whole avatar design process to
ensure the suitability of the disability representations.

Support representations for people with invisible disabilities. Compared to
visible disabilities, some invisible disabilities could not be easily
expressed, especially when no apparent assistive technologies are used to
signify the disability. In our study, participants suggested using
accessories, such as a necklace with Brailles or an arm badge with their
community logo, to present their disabilities. We suggest that designers
should consider using these indirect mediums, such as outfits with disability
signifiers (e.g., a T-Shirt with the Autism Awareness Puzzle logo), to enable
people with invisible disabilities to better manage their disability
visibility in social VR.

Guarantee appropriate use of diversity features. Adding more avatar diversity
features may also pose potential risks. Our participants indicated their
concerns on the inappropriate usage of these features by people without
disabilities. The abuse of diversity features can lead to cyber-bullying and
increase the misconception of disability from the public. One participant
(H-P8) further suggested conducting strict verification on the authenticity of
one’s disability before they can access the diversity features. How to
guarantee the proper use of the diversity features is a vital issue that
should be considered by the commercial social VR platforms from both the
design and the policy perspectives. Researchers and designers should
investigate how to set up suitable rules to support interaction freedom
without marginalizing and harming vulnerable populations on these new and
emerging social platforms.

####  5.3.2. Avatar Accessibility

Our findings highlighted the difficulties faced by VI and DHH people when
designing avatars. This echoed the general VR accessibility issues revealed by
prior research (Zhao et al., 2019; L. Franz et al., 2021; Mott et al., 2019;
Carr, 2010), and also expanded the problems from a new avatar creation
perspective. We drew three design implications to enhance avatar
accessibility.

Combine avatar automation with fine-grained customization. Avatar creation is
not accessible to VI participants due to its heavily visual-driven nature and
the complex steps to navigate. Our blind participants usually needed external
human assistance in customizing their avatars. Instead of crafting the avatars
from scratch, some participants suggested automating the avatar generation
process (M-P1, V-P5): the avatar system should automatically generate a
baseline avatar based on the user’s photo, and allow the user to adjust
details based on their preferences. While not new, this feature is supported
by very limited number of social VR platforms. In our application review
(Study I), only three out of 15 commercial social VR platforms support avatar
automation. We suggest that designers should consider enabling multiple avatar
creation methods—both auto generation and manual adjustment—to enhance the
accessibility of avatar creation and customisation for people with diverse
abilities.

Convey avatar design outcomes for VI users. VI users rely on alternative text
to perceive graphic information. Our research highlighted the lack of and the
need for alternative text and screen reader support for avatars in social VR.
While the avatar design system for conventional social media (e.g., Facebook,
SnapChat) could be accessed by VI users via alternative text and embedded
screen readers, participants reported challenges in understanding their
customization progress and final outcomes, which led to their emotional
detachment from the avatars. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology could be
considered to recognize the avatars and generate semantic confirmations about
the holistic avatar customization outcomes, such as whether the avatar looks
like the user. However, this could be technically and ethically challenging
since categorizing and recognizing human facial features is difficult in both
technology (Raji et al., 2020; Stark, 2019; Dalvi et al., 2021) and sociology
fields (Dunham et al., 2015; Hanley et al., 2021). For example, an algorithm
may mis-recognize particular avatar or user faces and report inappropriate
results. Moreover, how to suitably label and describe human appearance,
especially the marginalized groups, is another important question to consider
(James Edwards et al., 2021; Hanley et al., 2021; Bennett et al., 2021).
Besides refining the algorithms and datasets from the computer vision
perspective (Taigman et al., 2014), HCI solutions could also be adopted, for
example, indicating the potential inaccuracy of the recognized results to
users (Zhao et al., 2018; MacLeod et al., 2017), or leveraging human-AI
collaboration to achieve more reliable results (Guo et al., 2018; Lee et al.,
2022).

Add closed caption for all audio information. Although the avatar creation and
customization process was visual-driven, adding closed caption would still be
valuable, especially for DHH users. We believe that with proper caption
positioning, closed caption will have an significantly positive impact on the
social VR ecosystem.

##  6\. Limitations and Future Work

In this paper, we studied the avatar experience and perception of PWD on
social VR platforms. We focused on two disability groups—DHH and VI people.
Future work should take into account more diverse types of disabilities to get
a more comprehensive understanding of PWD’s disability disclosure preferences,
especially for people with invisible disabilities. Moreover, our application
review study (Study I) focused on the Oculus Quest 2 platform. Although social
VR applications mostly support the same avatar design and accessibility
features across VR devices, we acknowledge that different VR devices may offer
their own system-level avatars (e.g., Oculus offers the Meta Avatars), which
may bring nuances to the review results. Thus, other mainstream VR devices
should also be considered to achieve a more comprehensive results. Finally,
future work may complement our qualitative findings with quantitative analysis
to investigate what factors may impact PWD’s disability disclosure behaviors,
such as gender, age, and disability visibility.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the National Federation of the Blind for helping us recruit for our
study, as well as the anonymous participants that provided their perspective.

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##  Appendix A Appendix

VR Platforms |  Avatar type |  Avatar Customization |  Avatar Realism |  Disability Representation
---|---|---|---|---
Rec Room |  |  |  |  N/A
VRChat |  |  |  |  Any uploaded 3rd-party disability features
Horizon Worlds |  |  |  |  Hearing aids; cochlear implants
vTime XR |  |  |  |  N/A
AltspaceVR |  |  |  |  N/A
Bigscreen |  |  |  |  Eye patch
Alcove |  |  |  |  Hearing aids; cochlear implants
Half+Half |  |  |  |  N/A
Horizon Venues |  |  |  |  Hearing aids; cochlear implants
Villa |  |  |  |  N/A
Arthur |  |  |  |  N/A
ENGAGE |  |  |  |  N/A
Multiverse |  |  |  |  N/A
PokerStars VR |  |  |  |  Hearing aids; cochlear implants
Spatial |  |  |  |  N/A
Table 2. Overview of social VR platforms and their avatar creation options.
Description of the icons: humanoid avatar= , robot avatar=, cartoon avatar=,
animal avatar=, object avatar= , abstract avatar=, full body avatar includes
head, upper body, arm hand, leg=, partial body avatar includes head, upper
body, arm, hand = , floating head without neck= , floating upper body without
arm = , floating hand=, floating fingerless hand = , full avatar selection = ,
avatar feature customization = , photo-based avatar generation = , third-party
avatar import =