Accessibility in Extended Reality: A Systematic Review of Accessibility Research on Extended Reality Published in the ACM Digital Library From 2000 to 2025

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR), including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), has become a powerful paradigm for human–computer interaction, offering new opportunities to support accessibility for people with disabilities and older adults. However, the rapidly growing body of XR accessibility research remains fragmented across communities, technologies, and methodological approaches, limiting a holistic understanding of the field. In this paper, we present a systematic review of 245 publications from the ACM Digital Library spanning 2000–2025. We develop a structured coding framework to analyze descriptive trends, research methods, communities studied, accessibility challenges addressed, technologies employed, and contribution types. Our findings reveal several key patterns. First, both research and progress are unevenly distributed across communities, with a strong focus on blind and low vision (BLV) users, older adults, and motor/physical disabilities and comparatively limited attention to other disability populations, such as intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) and people with multiple disabilities. Second, accessibility challenges are often framed within narrow functional domains, such as navigation or rehabilitation. Finally, studies frequently rely on small-scale, lab-based methods, with limited longitudinal and real-world evaluations. We further discuss emerging design implications and opportunities and directions for advancing more inclusive, robust, and ecologically valid XR accessibility research.