What is Blind Burners World?
Blind Burners World is our home in the Metaverse. A portal to our own VR worlds. And a home for our nascent Accessible Metaverse Map project, where we scan the horizons of the Metaverse industry for signs of intelligent life accessibility-first thinking.
All of our worlds are experiments in navigating, playfully, via sound.
We do not claim to provide full accessibility for blind and low vision users. Our purpose is to experiment playfully, to innovate, to onboard as many blind and low vision consumers and creators as possible, to welcome and look after them as well as we can, to raise funds and awareness, and to inspire well-funded tech companies to do better.
Our worlds are designed with two use-cases in mind:
- Visitors with no usable vision
- Visitors with partial sight-loss
Our worlds include experimental designs, where spatialised sounds and spoken guide descriptions.
Our Vision
Our vision is a world in which:
- Virtual Reality experiences and technologies include accessible user interfaces, where blind and low vision individuals can log in, set up profiles and avatars, launch experiences, navigate worlds, create and connect.
- There are clear career paths for blind software engineers, designers, artists and sound designers.
- There is rich appreciation of sound, movement, awareness and touch.
A world filled with the power and wisdom of visually impaired creativity.
Our Mission
Our mission is to:
- Catalyse progress towards digital inclusion in the Virtual Reality and Creator Tools industries.
- Assist blind and low vision people in accessing Virtual reality and digital creator tools
- Challenge assumptions that Virtual Reality and Video Games are visual mediums
- Co-create pioneering AAA artistic projects
Our Values
- Playfulness
- Openness about mental health
- Nudging ourselves gently out of our comfort zones
Accessibility in the Metaverse
When folks talk about the Metaverse they often imagine a dystopian or ultra-dystopian future. The race to build this Metaverse is one fueled by fantasy. A fantasy of a world with visual effects so realistic that visitors believe it could be real. A virtual world superseding the physical world. A self-fulfilling prophecy with its own intricately detailed social, economic and environmental tragedies.
Those building this version of the Metaverse allocate scarce resources to building ever-greater visual fidelity for this fantasy. They assume that virtual reality is a visual medium, and one disconnected from real world problems. By focusing on those who are light-dependent, they exclude many persons who are non-sighted. And they ignore, at their peril, the importance of sound.
Blind Burners World is OUR vision of the Metaverse.
As we expand from our humble origins with these two worlds, we will build more worlds on more platforms. Maybe we’ll build our own platform.
We will map and assess the accessibility of the frontiers of known Metaverses, and the accessibility of the technologies in which they are built. And we will do this, always, through art, storytelling and play.
The Team
Blind Burners is an international collective of sighted and non-sighted artists, technologists and performers, coalescing around shared interests in art, new technology, sound and movement.
More information on our team will be added to our organisation’s homepage. If you’d like to get involved or support us, please contact us here.
Build Crew
- World Builder – Whitt Sellers
- Sound Design – Jamie Perera
- Innovation & Accessibility – Marimuthu, Harsha Balasubramanian, Adil Latif
- For BRCVR: Athena Demos, Doug Jacobson, Krista Sarah Pugh, Andrew Barratt
- Creative Director – Chris Hainsworth
Thank You
Robin Pender. Jamie Perera. Dave Leo Baker. Cris Aragon and 5A Studios. Pigalle Tavakolli. Melody. Mike Brown. Adi Laflamme. The Altspace team and community. Katie Kelly, Dalya Perez, Ami Chernoff, Grace Huang, Leila Amirsadeghi and all our allies past present and future. Kelly Vero. Polly Superstar. Candace, Amani, Nurse, Rose, Sam, Dre and all Klowns and Idiots. Whitt Sellers – you genius! Chrissy – thank you! Curly Commander & All Back2Life Sessions DJs and Chat Room Champs. Zero the Cat, Tarot Cat and Ali Kat. Adil ‘Laddie’ Latif. Harsha Balasubramanian. Athena Demos – thank you for your steadfast support. Doug – our tech hero! Kalisti Dawn. Thomas Kohler. Sara Pugh – thank you for championing our work! Bobcat. Oscar. Nisha. Starr, Zander & Jesse. Ian Thornton and the Bridewell Taxis. Rev Be Atwell and Sister Sheena. Everyone in Co-Reality Collective – ‘This is Real!’. Tigerlily. Shaun Sheers. Kevin. DJ Hey. Velvet Thunder. Nathan Geering. Bill Moore. Yomi Ayeni. Jon Bates. Stefan Philip Berry.