Project overview

This collaborative project between Dr Shepherd (Abertay University) and Dr Gardner (FlockXR) explores how trust, privacy, and security intersect with accessibility in extended reality (XR) creation platforms for blind and partially sighted (BPS) creators.

Through a qualitative approach combining a literature review and interviews with stakeholders and BPS creators, it examines how accessible design shapes experiences of safety and participation. The project aims to identify key challenges and develop evidence-based design recommendations to support inclusive XR development, enabling more diverse creators and ultimately improving the accessibility of immersive experiences.

Objectives and deliverables

Extended reality (XR) technologies are on the rise, creating increasingly immersive experiences. As noted in the “XR Accessibility Insights and Toolkit: Gaming Sector Report”, "Game engine creators should consider creating improved accessibility tooling to support development of XR experiences" (Shepherd et al., 2025). Increasing the number of blind and partially sighted (BPS) creators has the potential to increase the range and accessibility of XR experiences available to BPS users.

FlockXR and lead developer Dr Gardner (2026) is already working to make XR development more accessible through its web-based creation platform and is seeking to extend this work further to support BPS creators. However, there iscurrently limited understanding of how privacy, security, and trust challenges intersect with accessibility in creative XR environments; this secondment aims to start exploring these issues, providing FlockXR and other creative platforms an evidence-backed pathway to enhance accessibility.

Research Questions

• RQ1 - How do visually impaired digital creators establish and maintain trust when using creative technology platforms?

• RQ2 - How do accessibility considerations shape experiences of trust, privacy, and security within creative technology platforms?

Objectives

Each of the objectives are linked to a work package outlined in the methodology.

• O1 - Synthesise existing research on trust, privacy, security, though an accessibility and digital creativity lens.

• O2 - Understand stakeholder perspectives regarding challenges associated with trust, privacy, and security, in the context of accessibility in creative technology platforms.

• O3 - Draw on the lived experience of BPS digital creators, and how they consider trust, privacy, and security when creating and sharing with creative technology platforms.

• O4 - Identify the factors influencing privacy, trust, and safety among BPS digital creators and develop evidence-based design recommendations.

• O5 - Disseminate project findings through reports, stakeholder briefings, and academic outputs that inform future research, policy, and practice.

Deliverables

As a result of the secondment, the following deliverables will be developed:

• A project report containing a high-level overview of work conducted during the secondment.

• Best practice design guidelines for creative technology platforms will be produced and shared publicly; these will shape the development of such platforms, including FlockXR.

• We will write up our findings for publication as a high-impact journal paper (targeting the likes of Elsevier’s International Journal of HumanComputer Studies) or a conference paper (targeting the likes of ACM’s CHI conference, or BritCHI).

We anticipate our findings will be of interest to industry, practitioners, charities, and those involved in games technologies and human-computer interaction research.