By Wesley Regenbogen
We
sometimes don’t realize it, but there are people with
disabilities in real life. They have a presence with Second Life
as well. With that
said, this means that over 15%, but closer to 20 % of the Second Life
residents have a disability in real life. This means
that 1 out of 5 avatars you encounter in Second Life has a disability
in real life. That’s no small number. There
are places to visit for Second Life
residents with disabilities, such as Cape Able, Cape Serenity,
Health Info Island and there are residential areas. But one special place for them in Second Life is Virtual Ability Island.
Virtual
Ability Island was made by Gentle Heron and two friends of hers. But there
are other places to visit as well: Cape Able, Cape Serenity,
Health Info Island and there are residential areas for Second Life
residents with disabilities. It was
established in June 2007, seven years ago.
There is a
Virtual Ability group in Second Life with community events and there is a Google
Calendar, which can be viewed in-world. Eme
Capalini leads the Design/Build team of Virtual Ability Island. She
wanted to make the island fully accessible and she did a very good
job making that possible. Their
website http://www.virtualability.org
gives readers more information about the Virtual Ability Island.
What’s
special about this place? Gentle
Heron said this about it: “Our community welcomes people with all
kinds of chronic illnesses and disabilities (physical, mental,
emotional, developmental, and sensory) and helps them use the virtual
world. We have been able to adapt all types of assistive technology
that people use to access their computers to interface with Second
Life.”
Able
bodies don’t always think about how many skills they use in their
everyday lives. But if you
are recovering from a stroke or a traumatic brain injury or assisting
a family member or a friend in that situation, then you suddenly
realize just how many skills need to be re-learned.
In my
personal opinion, this place is a nice place to learn more about
disabilities, and realizing that there are Second Life residents
who have a disability in real life. Either
they are in a wheelchair, they are blind, or they have another
disability. This makes
you realize that there are many people with disabilities in both, the
virtual worlds and in real life.
I find
this project a very nice one, which offers many possibilities and
high potential.
You can
find the mentioned places :
Virtual
Ability Island :
Cape
Able :
Cape
Serenity :
HealthInfo
Island :
Wesley Regenbogen
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