VR to assist autistic people into work

A group of students had no sooner come up with the idea of using virtual reality (VR) to help autistic people practise for employment challenges, than they were flown to a conference for startups in Barcelona.

The co-founders, Anzel Singh, Weilian Du and Sarah Mwashomah, all now graduates, came together at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Summer Lab 2019 with a common goal.

“We wanted to support disabled people who could benefit from emerging immersive technologies,” says Anzel.

They called around autism groups and found employment was one of the biggest challenges.

So, they set about developing VR to help neurodiverse people practise for workplace challenges, such as job interviews, talking to their manager about their diagnosis or asking for reasonable accommodations.

During Summer Lab, the trio worked with the University’s Media Production Services to film a job interview from the point-of-view of an unseen interviewee as a prototype for the eventual VR version.

They entered this video and a project summary into the Mobile Schools competition, where startups are invited to propose digital technologies that will further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Shortly after entering, they were notified they were winners and would be flying to Barcelona for 4YFN of Mobile World Congress at the end of Summer Lab.

“I think all three of us were excited but also initially like, ‘Is this a real competition, or are we going to get kidnapped? Just because it was so far away and sounded too good to be true,” Anzel says.

Instead, they found themselves among 22,000 other entrepreneurs at the most influential startup conference in the world.

Anzel, Weilian and Sarah returned and pulled together a team of fellow students to help develop their VR solution, now called Socius XR.

Since then, as graduates, they have continued to volunteer their time to the project.

They have also established their own Autism Advocacy Advisory Group of neurodivergent people who have been enthusiastic about the Socius XR concept.

Over 70 million people are on the Autism spectrum globally, and over 93,000 in New Zealand.

Autistic people can often find social interaction extremely challenging, specifically, understanding verbal and non-verbal cues and contexts.

These barriers often impact on opportunities to obtain meaningful employment.

The social enterprise’s name, “Socius XR”, is from the Latin word for society and encompasses the ideas of inclusion and empowering different ways of thinking.

“XR” stands for extended reality, a broad term for immersive experiences.

Funding for purchasing the technology has come chiefly from competition winnings.

the team won a grant from the Westpac New Zealand Government Innovation Fund (see CIE Newsroom 21 February 2021), under its “future of work” initiative.

They are also trialling VR experiences catered towards  employers so that they better understand autistic people’s perspective.

“Ensuring that working environments are accommodating to neurodivergent people’s needs is the key to unlocking the significant amount of value that comes with thinking differently,” Anzel says.

The team is hoping to launch its VR technology and an associated smartphone app late in 2021.