Internet Users Will Have A ``Second Life'' in the Virtual World by the End of 2011

"By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life,” but not necessarily in Second Life, according to Gartner, Inc."

A new internet is coming, and it is important to make it as accessible as possible!

Read the web article.

Video Workshop with Daniel Huebner

Ok, this workshop has nothing to do with Accessibility for 3D environments or video games, but it provides some information and background on Second Life. Daniel Huebner Linden Lab’s Director of community affairs. The video is mainly questions and answers format, so sometimes the sound is bad.

How They Got Game Workshop #1

The Accessibility Island Education Center is Open

The education center on the island is open for business. Most of the information comes from Game Accessibility.com web site. The purpose of center is to provide information about game accessibility inside of a 3D environment. I design the center as open platforms, so the users can see rest of the island. There is 3 platforms or classrooms that is dedicated to a specific disability.

Here are the specific disabilities:

• Gaming with a visual disability - read the page and look at the recommended games information.
  

• Gaming with an auditory disability - read the page and visit the different links for more information.
  

• Gaming with a physical disability -read the page and visit the different links for more information.

A History Lesson

I believe that it is a good idea to understand the History of the video games and how Accessibility plays a important roll.

History of video games fromWikipedia

This gives you a good understanding how video games got started. It might help to understand the past as we look to the future! This is especially true when looking at ACCESSIBILITY!

The next web article discuss what has been done for making games systems accessible.

Accessible Gaming Pioneers from One Switch

Is this a real life, is this just fantasy? A Times News Article

This article discusses some of the impact that Second Life is making on people with disabilities. How SL is improving people with different disabilities lives already, and just think about what will happen if the application can be made accessible for more people that cannot access it now.

Is this a real life, is this just fantasy?

UTD ACCESSIBILITY ISLAND

The best way to discover new methods for accessibility is to work inside a 3D environment, so The University of Texas at Dallas has purchased a Second Life Island. Inside of Second Life, is a 3D environment that users can do whatever thay want, and learn to create items or build 3D structures. Additionally, Second Life provides many different social networks for people can be apart of, so if I want to go to a club and dance with friends I can. To learn more about Second Life please click the Second Life link on the side under important links.

The island being built in stages, and I am building the Education Center. The center will educate and provided information on Game Accessibility for different disabilities.
The next stage will be to build an Conference Center, so professionals and others can meet to discuss many different topics on accessibility in 3D or video games. In Second Life, it is possible to show video's and very soon to talk to each other like a conference call.
The last stage will be to set an area of the island for research and development. Because Second Life is built on a game engine and everything is open source then a team should be able to develop a new interface for SL. However, I need a team of programers that understand open source coding.

Welcome to the future of the Internet

Imagine a new type of Internet that will be built around a 3D game engine and you can walk through a 3D Sears Department store. In the store, you see a HD TV with a streaming vido playing and you can walk around the back and see the connections. You even can click an information button to read about the TV. Of course, there is a buy button for you to purchase the HD TV.

Now, the question is how can these type of 3D environments be made accessible for people with disabilities? It is not as simple as adding html code to an image tag, so a screen reader can read the information about the image. However, this is not as simple to do with 3D environments. This is what the project will address by using game accessibility methods and open source programming to develop new methods and standards to make 3D Environments of any type accessible for anyone with a disability.