CRIPVERSATION — open-sourcing a Crip approach to VR environments

CRIPVERSATION — open-sourcing a Crip approach to VR environments
October 2026
Mikki Bradshaw & Anne Goldenberg
À Nos Prothèses https://anosprotheses.wordpress.com/
https://satellite.sat.qc.ca/d8Ya5PG/cripversation

Virtual reality is, by default, designed for sighted, hearing, and able bodies: headsets induce vertigo; hand controllers exclude people with reduced mobility; environments assume visual and auditory norms.

We're part of À Nos Prothèses, a Quebec-based collective of Blind, Deaf, hypersensitive, and mobility-diverse artists specialized in cross-disability creation. How to build virtual environments reflecting our embodied knowledge and diverse ways of sensing?

Cripversation began in 2025, when a VR model of the collective's own exhibition proved inaccessible to its 15 crip members. Furious at this tokenism, we accepted a residency at LaboHSI, a disability and Deaf-culture innovation lab, catalogued the platform's failures into a booklet of frustrations and desires, and turned that anger into a creative drive.

Working with an adaptation of Hubs and a Makey Makey board, we developed a multisensory environment incorporating cardinal sound orientation, projectors, and speakers. We also built a tactile puppet that functions as controller — an alternative interface based on touch and sound.

The environment is a spaceship set down in a forest, each room hosting a specific artwork — 3D sculpture, prosthetic stories, dream holder, crip songs and poetry — all signed and audio-described.

We also found valuable failures: Blind participants exited the environment too quickly; wheelchair users with rubberized wheels struggled to complete the Makey Makey's electrical circuit. These moments showed that accessibility can't be reduced to technical fixes — it calls for embodied collaboration and access intimacy.

After GOSH 2026, we bring the installation to the Blind Youth Association (BYAN), the co-living space CIL_Katmandou, and the Kopila Valley Maker Space, documenting our process around four open questions:

1. How do our frustrations and mistakes become occasions for deeper understanding?

2. How can a tactile puppet double as controller and IRL/VR avatar?

3. Can Hubs-like environments support inter-capacity participation?

4. How can documentation itself stay accessible enough for Crip participants to read, annotate, and extend?

We're moving from a community of practice toward an epistemic one — turning lived experience into knowledge others can adapt and challenge. Join us in documenting what we find, failures included, as we build accessible futures together.