Building Augmented and Virtual Reality Experiences for Children with Visual Diversity

Abstract

Currently, a binational network of universities carries out a collaborative project which seeks to promote inclusion and education in environmental issues for children. The so-called ''Colombia-Québec collaborative project'' seeks to develop interactive narratives about four Colombian animals to help develop language, cognitive and motricity skills in children while they gain awareness of endangered animals. Chosen animals include the cotton top tamarin, the jaguar, the spectacled bear, and the condor. We are building several interactive systems which take advantage of augmented and virtual reality technologies to expand narratives developed by speech and language therapists. Our goal is to use these systems to study the effects of the virtuality continuum in visually diverse children's development. We present our advances towards achieving it.