Accessibility and Accomodations Policy

The Metaverse Standards Forum is committed to ensuring that all our members can participate fully, and provides a number of accommodations and accessibility options for anyone who wants them.

Accommodating People

Our approach to accessibility and accommodations is to ensure that our spaces are safe and welcoming for everybody. Accommodations we provide are not only focused on accessibility, instead aiming beyond that to make sure that you feel safe and comfortable in any space we provide.

Every person is a complex individual with their own needs, and we aim to accommodate people, not labels.

The Forum is committed to providing accommodations for all members and event participants.

Private Information

If you request an accommodation you will never be asked to disclose any personal or private information.

The only information we will ever request will be in terms of ensuring we get the accommodation right. For example, if you request a sign language interpreter, we’ll make sure they’re signing in the right language, and that they are present for all the meetings you need them for.

Automatic Accommodations

We maintain a (non-exhaustive) list of accommodations that we have experience with providing, to give you a baseline of what to expect when entering a Khronos Group space. As this list is still a work in progress, it is not yet publicly available, but we will update this document to link to it as soon as it is. Many items on this list will not need to be requested – we will provide them without anyone requesting them in advance, and several others can be provided on the spot or with advance notice.

Accommodations not on the approved list can still be provided, unless they meet one of our Reasons to Decline Accommodations. For physical events, Forum Staff are able to provide simple accommodations that aren’t on the approved list by using our limited discretionary funds without further approval. Accommodations that are complex or more costly will need further approval by the Forum  Officers.

Reasons to Decline Accommodations

Reasons we’d decline a particular accommodation will never have anything to do with personal circumstance. However, we may decline for one of the following reasons:

  • Providing the specific accommodation requested is logistically impractical (e.g. too little notice, significant unforeseen cost).
  • The request would provide an advantage to some at the expense of more disadvantaged people.

In all cases where we decline, reasons will be given to the requestor, and an attempt will be made to find alternative arrangements where possible. We will commit to understanding how we might be able to fulfill declined accommodations in the future with the goal of adding them to our approved list.