IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2020 May;26(5):2084-2093. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2973441. Epub 2020 Feb 13.
Virtual Reality (VR) has a great potential to improve skills of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) people. Most VR applications and devices are designed for persons without hearing problems. Therefore, DHH persons have many limitations when using VR. Adding special features in a VR environment, such as subtitles, or haptic devices will help them. Previously, it was necessary to design a special VR environment for DHH persons. We introduce and evaluate a new prototype called "EarVR" that can be mounted on any desktop or mobile VR Head-Mounted Display (HMD). EarVR analyzes 3D sounds in a VR environment and locates the direction of the sound source that is closest to a user. It notifies the user about the sound direction using two vibro-motors placed on the user's ears. EarVR helps DHH persons to complete sound-based VR tasks in any VR application with 3D audio and a mute option for background music. Therefore, DHH persons can use all VR applications with 3D audio, not only those applications designed for them. Our user study shows that DHH participants were able to complete a simple VR task significantly faster with EarVR than without. The completion time of DHH participants was very close to participants without hearing problems. Also, it shows that DHH participants were able to finish a complex VR task with EarVR, while without it, they could not finish the task even once. Finally, our qualitative and quantitative evaluation among DHH participants indicates that they preferred to use EarVR and it encouraged them to use VR technology more.
虚拟现实（VR）在提高聋人和重听（DHH）人士的技能方面具有巨大潜力。大多数 VR 应用程序和设备都是为没有听力问题的人设计的。因此，DHH 人士在使用 VR 时会受到很多限制。在 VR 环境中添加特殊功能，如字幕或触觉设备，将有助于他们。以前，有必要为 DHH 人士设计特殊的 VR 环境。我们介绍并评估了一个名为“EarVR”的新原型，它可以安装在任何桌面或移动 VR 头戴式显示器（HMD）上。EarVR 分析 VR 环境中的 3D 声音，并找到最接近用户的声源方向。它通过放置在用户耳朵上的两个振动马达向用户通知声音方向。EarVR 帮助 DHH 人士在任何具有 3D 音频和背景音乐静音选项的 VR 应用程序中完成基于声音的 VR 任务。因此，DHH 人士不仅可以使用专为他们设计的应用程序，还可以使用所有具有 3D 音频的 VR 应用程序。我们的用户研究表明，与没有 EarVR 相比，DHH 参与者使用 EarVR 能够显著更快地完成简单的 VR 任务。DHH 参与者的完成时间非常接近没有听力问题的参与者。此外，它表明，DHH 参与者能够使用 EarVR 完成复杂的 VR 任务，而没有它，他们甚至无法完成一次任务。最后，我们对 DHH 参与者的定性和定量评估表明，他们更喜欢使用 EarVR，这鼓励他们更多地使用 VR 技术。
