Empathy is best taught by putting someone in another person’s shoes, as the saying goes. From an outside perspective, we can still see an unfortunate circumstance and feel for it and the people involved; however, truly experiencing an event and living through it first hand is something else entirely. Virtual Reality has the unique ability to replicate this.
Education is my primary goal for this endeavor. This will most likely be used in classrooms in an effort to teach empathy and expand perspective. Speaking of which, in class the other day, we were among refugees struggling to survive. We also experienced what it was like to lose our vision, our sense of sight. This was far more powerful than watching the news, or reading the story of a blind man. I want to do something similar with The Creature from Frankenstein.
I want to share the experience of what it would be like to go through life with impairments, as well as a unique appearance. I want to understand what “a day in the life” is like for someone bound to a wheelchair. I want to see what struggles they face and how they are treated by common people.
This was inspired by, of course, Frankenstein, as well as the accessibility assessment from earlier in the semester. I believe that experiencing this life first hand will allow the average, able-bodied person to have a greater respect towards and empathize with someone who gets around in a wheelchair. VR is an excellent medium for this venture. Some details I’ve thought of: VR user should be seated, as if they were bound to a wheelchair; character/model should be fully clothed in unisex attire, if possible, for maximum immersion for the user; as an “on rails” VR experience, there should be less motion sickness in inexperienced VR users, or those who simply struggle with virtual reality.