Abstract A dual engagement with Critical Disability Studies and Critical XR Studies reveals the necessity for exposing ableism in immersion, especially when it is associated with virtual reality (VR). In response, this article advocates for an anti-ableist ethnography of VR. In what follows, I reconceptualize onboarding and offboarding practices in location-based VR experiences as sites for surfacing ableist norms. This becomes possible through critically approaching current scholarship on onboarding and offboarding, identifying how practitioners here may be understanding immersion as far from seamless, that is, in terms of the processes involved and frictions negotiated. I argue that problematizing immersion in this way is the first critical step towards exposing ableist norms and hence an anti-ableist ethnography.
Harshadha Balasubramanian (Thu,) studied this question.