KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 21, 2024 – Virtual reality devices have become a popular alternative for entertainment, communications, and education with more than 30 million people in the U.S. owning systems and exploring immersive 3-D worlds to play video games, learn new skills, or create art.

But can virtual reality be used as a tool to help people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) recover from traumatic situations?

Krishna Venkatasubramanian, University of Rhode Island professor of computer science and statistics, is exploring that possibility through a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Through his research, he hopes to design virtual worlds that enable adults with IDD, who have experienced trauma, to help them cope by diverting their attention from negative thoughts when they are triggered.

Venkatasubramanian, director of the Accessible and Socially Aware Technologies (ASSET) Lab at URI, has worked with people with IDD for more than six years on numerous projects designing, testing, and creating usable technology. There are more than 7 million people in the U.S. who are dealing with IDD, such as Down syndrome and autism, and many of them experience traumatic events, such as abuse, he said.

These events – along with the effects of dealing with health and mental health issues, and everyday life – can trigger feelings of depression, grief, and anxiety. On top of that, there is a lack of therapists trained to work with people in the IDD community, he said.

“All these issues lead to a big problem because they can’t get the help they need. So, we were thinking, ‘Can we use technology in some way to help,’” said Venkatasubramanian. “The goal is to help them cope in the moment so that when they are triggered by something that happens in their lives, they can use virtual reality to help them cope with the situation.

“It would primarily be a self-regulation tool and we are trying to design it to be independently usable by them as opposed to somebody helping them do it,” he added. “This would exist parallel with any other help [such as therapy] they need.”

Virtual reality devices and the virtual 3-D worlds that give users an immersive experience, could be an ideal tool. The devices are relatively inexpensive and the interface to use them is similar to that of a smartphone, which is familiar to people with IDD, he said. Virtual reality has also been used for self-regulation strategies – such as creating meditation environments. But those virtual worlds have been designed for people who already understand meditation, have used virtual reality and its controls, and know how to navigate immersive settings, he said.

“It’s more complicated because we are designing for people who have no idea about VR, who can sometimes be surprised by VR. So, the basic aspects of VR design have to be questioned, which if you are designing for a neurotypical person, you wouldn’t have to worry about. That’s what makes it very interesting from a technical design standpoint.”

To understand accessibility issues, Venkatasubramanian is meeting with members of the IDD community and observing them using VR headsets to witness what problems they’ve had with the system. Most of the problems stem from the poor design of virtual reality headsets, controllers, and 3-D environments for use by people with IDD. Community guidance will be critical in helping to address these issues.

“We design in conjunction with the community,” he said. “We don’t impose our neurotypical mindset on them. Every time we do something, we ask them, ‘What do you want to do?’ And then they suggest ideas, we implement them, and we check with them.”

Along with design, he will be exploring self-regulation strategies – such as meditation or listening to music – that members of the community may use and incorporating them into the virtual reality environment. The project also uses the notion of “trauma-informed care” from the field of social work, recognizing the role of trauma and its lasting effects on people who have experienced it and using that awareness to design care practices to avoid retraumatizing them.

“That is the conceptual underpinning of this research,” he said. “We want to do this VR research and all that. That’s the showy stuff. But the conceptual underpinning of the project is this idea of taking trauma-informed care from the field of social work and applying it to computer science.”

Venkatasubramanian plans to pilot the technology with members of the IDD community who were not part of the design team. They will use the devices for the first time and report on their experience.

“At the end, we will have guidelines for how to design for this community, know what kind of self-regulation they do, and have examples of apps,” he said, “so other people can build on that research.”