Browsing by Author "Zhao, Yuhang"

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    A Diary Study in Social Virtual Reality: Impact of Avatars with Disability Signifiers on the Social Experiences of People with Disabilities
    Zhang, Kexin; Deldari, Elmira; Yao, Yaxing; Zhao, Yuhang (ACM, 2023-10-22)
    People with disabilities (PWD) have shown a growing presence in the emerging social virtual reality (VR). To support disability representation, some social VR platforms start to involve disability features in avatar design. However, it is unclear how disability disclosure via avatars (and the way to present it)would afect PWD’s social experiences and interaction dynamics with others. To fll this gap, we conducted a diary study with 10 PWD who freely explored VRChat—a popular commercial social VR platform—for two weeks, comparing their experiences between using regular avatars and avatars with disability signifers (i.e., avatar features that indicate the user’s disability in real life). We found that PWD preferred using avatars with disability signifers and wanted to further enhance their aesthetics and interactivity. However, such avatars also caused embodied, explicit harassment targeting PWD. We revealed the unique factors that led to such harassment and derived design implications and protection mechanisms to inspire more safe and inclusive social VR.
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    “If sighted people know, I should be able to know:” Privacy Perceptions of Bystanders with Visual Impairments around Camera-based Technology
    Zhao, Yuhang; Yao, Yaxing; Fu, Jiaru; Zhou, Nihan (USENIX Security, 2023-08-11)
    Camera-based technology can be privacy-invasive, especially for bystanders who can be captured by the cameras but do not have direct control or access to the devices. The privacy threats become even more significant to bystanders with visual impairments (BVI) since they cannot visually discover the use of cameras nearby and effectively avoid being captured. While some prior research has studied visually impaired people’s privacy concerns as direct users of camerabased assistive technologies, no research has explored their unique privacy perceptions and needs as bystanders. We conducted an in-depth interview study with 16 visually impaired participants to understand BVI’s privacy concerns, expectations, and needs in different camera usage scenarios. A preliminary survey with 90 visually impaired respondents and 96 sighted controls was conducted to compare BVI and sighted bystanders’ general attitudes towards cameras and elicit camera usage scenarios for the interview study. Our research revealed BVI’s unique privacy challenges and perceptions around cameras, highlighting their needs for privacy awareness and protection. We summarized design considerations for future privacy-enhancing technologies to fulfill BVI’s privacy needs.