Speaking of Second Life...

This post by Anna on FWD/Forward informs me that there's a Helen Keller Mythbusting Day coming up on June 19th.

It's going to be Helen Keller Day in Second Life, with events at four in-world locations including a keynote speech, a fashion show, Braille chat, exploring with a virtual guide dog, and lots more. This highlights some of the interesting ways that the internet generally, and virtual worlds specifically, can provide new ways to make things accessible to people with different needs.

I also note in Anna's post the phrase "If I played Second Life, I would be all over this." So it's definitely not just me--there's a general perception that SL is something you kind of need to be regularly engaged in in order to get anything out of it.

I'm not sure if my idle thought about whether it might be possible to use it more casually like web-conferencing software would really work. I was thinking more about it, and really, the sign-up process may be a bit too intensive for most people to feel that it's a worthwhile investment if they're only planning to, I don't know, attend a workshop on Resource Description and Access or something.

You have to download the software and set up an account, which is also true with, say, Wimba or other programs that allow for real-time webinars and the like, so that's not particularly onerous.

But then you also have to create your avatar, which can be a time-consuming process if you want to get your hair just the right shade of purple, and then you have to learn how to move around and travel from place to place and interact with other people, and it's not especially hard, but it's not necessarily a direct transfer of previously held skills. I know it took me some time to start figuring out how to get places and find things.

It's like navigating the internet, but not exactly.

So it's one thing to say "download this software and then log into this online conference room to get audio of a speech and some Powerpoint slides and you can also chat with other people there," and another to say "download this really huge program and create a virtual representation of yourself and then log into this online world and locate this in-world location to get audio of a speech and some Powerpoint slides with a much prettier background environment and you can also see representations of the other people there that you can chat with."

I think Second Life could add something to an online conference, but I don't know if it adds enough that it would be easy to convince people to sign up and learn to use it just for that, if they didn't have a need for any accessibility features it might offer.

But since I already have an account, I'm totally in favor of having an RDA workshop there. And of course Helen Keller Day, which sounds pretty cool.

.