VR and AR Design for Developers: Accessibility Isn’t Optional (and It’s Not Niche) with dr. nigel newbutt
In our latest podcast episode, we sat down with Dr. Nigel Newbutt—Assistant Professor at the University of Florida College of Education—whose work focuses on how emerging technologies can advance access, inclusion, and meaningful participation for autistic and neurodivergent communities.
The headline: accessible design is as much a business decision as it is an ethical one. If you’re building XR, web, or mobile experiences, you don’t want to exclude a meaningful chunk of your potential market.
About the Guest: Dr. Nigel Newbutt
Dr. Newbutt is an award-winning, internationally recognized leader in emerging technologies for inclusion. His research interests include virtual reality, emerging technologies, universal design for learning, and educational technology interventions.
Learn more about Dr. Newbutt’s work here: https://education.ufl.edu/faculty/newbutt-nigel/
Watch the Conversation Now
Episode Highlights
Why Nigel got into XR: His interest in XR accessibility emerged from a long-term commitment to improving experiences for autistic and neurodiverse individuals across education, employment, and independent living.
XR’s unique advantage: XR can create controlled, customizable, low-stakes environments that support autonomy and reduce anxiety—while still feeling “real” enough to help skills transfer into real-world contexts.
Where XR is working right now: Nigel sees the strongest use cases clustered in three areas:
Education & training (technical procedures, public speaking, first aid, personalized learning)
Healthcare & rehabilitation (pain management, therapy, social skills training, remote access)
Assistive technology (AR heads-up displays, descriptive audio, support for aging populations)
Accessibility must be designed in—not bolted on: The best examples come from teams that treat accessibility as a foundation from day one.
Key Takeaways (for builders and business owners)
1) Accessibility is a growth lever, not a checkbox
Nigel frames it simply: accessibility isn’t optional. It makes products better—and it expands who can use them.
A concrete example from the conversation: closed captions were designed for people who are hearing impaired, but they became mainstream because they’re useful in more contexts than anyone predicted.
2) XR can support neurodiverse learning better than 2D
XR’s immersive, interactive nature can turn passive learning into experiential learning—often a better fit for diverse learning styles.
Nigel shared a powerful example from a UK school that trained autistic students for a real on-campus coffee shop job using VR. The VR environment allowed learners to:
Practice at their own pace
Repeat training as many times as needed
Make mistakes without real-world consequences
Transition into the real environment with more confidence
3) Inclusion creates “unpredictable benefits”
A recurring theme: when you design for differences, you often improve the experience for everyone.
We talked about mixed reality concepts that:
Reduce social overwhelm by blurring faces so a user can focus on one person at a time
Support social interpretation by labeling facial expressions/emotions
Some people see these as “Black Mirror.” But for others, these tools can be the difference between participating comfortably—or opting out entirely.
4) XR introduces new accessibility challenges (and you have to plan for them)
Nigel called out a few common friction points teams should anticipate:
Sensory overstimulation
Cybersickness (motion sickness, dizziness, eye strain)
Fine motor control challenges (controllers, gestures, teleport locomotion)
Hardware constraints (glasses fit, headset weight)
Lack of standard accessibility patterns across XR platforms
Even when new tech removes one barrier (e.g., hand tracking replacing controllers), it can introduce another (e.g., what about users who can’t use hands reliably?).
Practical Design Considerations for XR Teams
Nigel’s “headline” advice: start from the principle that accessibility is a foundation.
A few concrete practices discussed in the episode:
Build comfort + control into locomotion:
Multiple movement options
Adjustable movement speeds
Visual anchors
Motion-sickness reduction strategies
Keep interfaces simple, consistent, readable
Provide alternatives to gesture-only controls:
Voice commands
Controller shortcuts
Gaze-based interaction
For AR: plan for the real world being dynamic:
Contrast and legibility across lighting conditions
Avoid visual clutter
Test outdoors, indoors, and “worst case” environments
A quick story from Dauntless XR: outdoor lighting will humble you
We shared an early Katana XR test on an Air Force base—inside a cockpit that was essentially “all windows,” on a bright tarmac day.
Result: we couldn’t read the UI.
That experience pushed us to add a user-controlled light mode / dark mode switch (a web-native pattern we initially missed in XR). We even spun the solution out as a Unity asset so other teams don’t have to learn that lesson the hard way.
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If you’d like to be featured or know someone with a unique perspective on XR, drop us a note at hello@dauntlessxr.com.
