The Effects of Avatars on Presence in Virtual Environments for Persons with Mobility Impairments

The main question we ask is: How do avatars affect presence specifically for Persons with Mobility Impairments (PMIs)? For example, PMIs’ deficits in the proprioceptive sense could affect their body perception in immersive virtual reality, which could impact presence. To investigate this we replicated the classic virtual pit experiment and included a responsive full body avatar (or lack thereof) as a 3D user interface. We recruited from two different populations: 11 PMIs and another 11 Persons without Mobility Impairments (PNMIs) as a control. Each PNMI was matched to a PMI based on age, weight, height, and prior VE exposure. Results of this study indicate that avatars elicit a higher sense of presence for PMIs than for PNMIs. In addition, results suggest that PMIs are easier to immerse in VEs than PNMIs, which may further motivate the future use of VE technology for PMIs.