Don't Forget Our Presence: Exploring VR for Older Adults

Virtual reality (VR) as a technology has been around for decades, but the modern era of VR started with the commercial release of the Oculus Rift headset in 2016. The intervening years have seen significant growth in the technology and its application. Lowered barriers to entry (e.g., system cost, no longer requiring a powerful gaming computer) and a pandemic have resulted in a substantial increase in the use of VR in the workplace and at home. During this period, the older adult population, those 65 and older, is also experiencing rapid growth. While the benefits of older adults using VR are numerous (e.g., socialization, rehabilitation, well-being), recent studies show that only a fraction of the older adult population has used VR. We conducted a study investigating accessibility barriers older adults may face when interacting with VR hardware and applications and what benefits they believed VR could provide. Our participants expressed that current VR technology does not support the needs and abilities of older adults, but if it did, they believed VR would benefit the population, demonstrating the need to create VR hardware and applications to support older adults.