Virtual Ability, Inc.

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Colorado, USA.  Our mission is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds like Second Life®.

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Virtual Ability Mental Health Symposium - 2012

 

Our society too often takes mental health for granted and too frequently stigmatizes people with mental health issues. The Virtual Ability Mental Health Symposium 2012, on Saturday, April 28, offers a variety of perspectives for thinking positively about mental health. Nine invited presenters offer a variety of positive approaches to thinking about mental health.  All presentations and follow-up discussions will take place in the virtual world of Second Life.

The summary schedule is posted here, and the full description of topics and presenters is posted here, in the Virtual Ability blog.


Waiting for the World to Change

Distributed Conference on Topics raised by the UN Conference on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

 

Virtual Ability, Inc. announces the distributed conference series “Waiting for the World to Change” to be held from December 2011 through December 2012.

The topics for this conference are drawn from those identified by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Presentations will take place in several venues, including Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability Island within Second Life®.

 

As a distributed conference, each session is announced separately. Please see the Virtual Ability blog for details.

College Open Textbook Project 


The Hewlett-funded Community College Open Textbooks Collaborative contracted with Virtual Ability, Inc. to review 60 open textbooks for college students (both websites and PDF documents) regarding accessibility. Since increasing numbers of college students have some kind of disability, accessibility is an important aspect of evaluating instructional materials.

 

VAI was selected in part because of the large group of experienced disabled persons we involved as evaluators. After extensive training, VAI evaluators delivered high-quality reports using consistent metrics. The biggest success factor for this project was an extremely motivated SL team, contributing to improvements for RL students with disabilities. This was an SL-based project with a positive value in real life.