Oculus VRCs Aim For Greater VR Access For All - But Facebook Concerns Remain

Oculus Virtual Reality Checks (VRCs) is a set of technical recommendations "designed to help developers create more accessible VR software." The company suggested today that this set of recommendations will allow developers to make their VR apps more compelling to more people. Areas of focus include audio, visuals, interactions, locomotion/movement, and "other aspects of accessible design."

Below you'll see a video showing what Oculus means when it suggests developers use their new VRC recommendations. This "Designing Accessible VR Experiences" presentation focuses on the fact that not all VR users are equally able to handle a wide variety of controls and/or experiences in VR games and apps.

Oculus also revealed this week that they'd joined with other XR association members and XR accessibility advocates to develop and publish a resource called "Accessibility and Inclusive Design in Immersive Experiences." In it, they show "best practices and potential solutions" across what they call the "five major disability categories." A bit of that is outlined in the video above, too.

The full set of VRCs launched today on Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift platforms for developers of all sorts. Oculus devices still require Facebook login. This Facebook account requirement continues to work with rules like the whole "deactivate your Facebook account and lose all your Oculus products and information" as outlined in the article linked in this paragraph.

This begs the question: At what point do we applaud the efforts of responsible creators and designers at Facebook and its various owned companies, at the same time as we call out the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, his monopolistic actions, and personal data harvesting for the past decade?

Should users just root to bypass Facebook? Or is Oculus inextricably tied to Facebook's personal data harvesting practices forever?