I was interviewed recently by an eyewear market report analyst, and asked if I thought spectacles and sunglasses would be a driver in the metaverse.
Most people will have been made aware of the metaverse and what it entails when Facebook changed its company name to Meta in October 2021. I certainly didn’t prior to that and it took a bit of head scratching to appreciate what the term actually meant. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg described it as an online world where people could ‘game, work and communicate in virtual and augmented environments,’ often using virtual reality headsets and other access points like smartphones, computers and tablets.
In trying to answer the question I had been posed, I first had to consider whether the metaverse would even make it to a point where eyewear would have a viable influence. The concept is very much in its infancy and is often used as a buzzword by publicists, but in theory, the metaverse will require users to be able to see the augmented reality as well as ‘seeing’ the virtual reality on displays, and all of that integrated into one device. That still feels like a long way off to me, even if recent developments in smart eyewear technology have resulted in improved form factor – think Ray-Ban Stories.
Being so dependent on visuals, however, raises the issue of accessibility. Are the blind and partially sighted being excluded from the metaverse before it has even started? Research into the subject suggests very little is being done by developers to make games and social apps inclusive for the partially sighted from the outset. Most assistive technology for low vision provides information for the user that is very much after the fact – a reference to what is being seen instead of a description of what is being seen and its surroundings.
There is opportunity for the metaverse to be disability accessible, but it needs to be part of the foundations and not an afterthought.