A Spoonie’s Guide to VR
From increasing physical activity to alleviating social isolation, Virtual Reality can truly be a therapeutic tool for the chronically ill, disabled, or anyone who finds themselves homebound for any number of reasons.
What is SpoonieVR?
Our Mission
SpoonieVR aims to be a resource for “Spoonies“, a.k.a. anyone living with health conditions which limit day-to-day functionality and energy levels. Virtual Reality is an excellent tool for social isolation relief and physical therapy, but it can be hard to decide whether or not to purchase a game based on reviews from healthier folks who may not appreciate how many “spoons” playing that game might take from us. On this site, you’ll find reviews, all written from a Spoonie’s perspective, with in-depth details on how the game impacted the reviewer’s health, including a “spoons” rating from 1-5 to give you a good idea of how energy-intensive the games or experiences may be.
SpoonieVR also advocates for increasing accessibility and inclusivity in VR. Our main goal on that front is to encourage developers to make VR fully accessible while lying horizontally, so that folks with severely limited mobility can also enjoy this virtual oasis.
Who is SpoonieVR?
Currently, this site is run by Sunny Ammerman, a.k.a., InsomniaDoodles with assistance from a few awesome folks in the Spoonie VR community, and we hope to welcome other contributors to join us in this mission! If you’re interested in getting involved, please click the “contact” button at the top of this page.
News & Reviews
Latest Articles
Weekly Meetups Moving to Discord
Hey, folks! This is just a quick announcement to keep you all up to date on our weekly chronic illness / disabilities peer support group. Since Spatial has been having so many issues with stability and other dealbreaking issues keeping us from having a smooth experience hosting our meetups there, we’ve decided to move our…
We’ve updated our Accessibility Chart!
Hey, folks! I just wanted to send out a quick blog post to let you all know that we’ve made some updates to how we collect and share our evaluations for our VR accessibility chart. Before, we relied on manual edits to a spreadsheet to log which accessibility features VR games and experiences, but now…
Study Researching Invisible Disability Representation in Social VR Seeking Participants
Cornell University students Lucy Jiang, Ria Gualano, and Kexin Zhang are conducting a research study on invisible disability representation via avatars in social VR. They are looking for folks who identify as having an invisible disability to participate in this study, which consists of an hour-long interview, in exchange for a $20 Amazon gift card.…
Share Your Story
Want to share how VR has impacted your life? We would love to share your story in an article or a short podcast interview! Just fill out the contact form below and someone will get back with you as soon as possible. Please keep in mind this site is run by a spoonie as well, so occasionally there may be a delay in response.
Image courtesy of Eugene Capon from Pexels
Calling All VR Developers!
Are you a VR content creator interested in collaborating with the Chronic Illness / Disability community to improve accessibility and inclusivity in your creations? Do you have a game, experience, or product that you would like SpoonieVR to review? Please reach out using this contact form!
Image courtesy of Tim Savage from Pexels
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