Extended Reality Guidelines for Supporting Autism Interventions Based on Stakeholders’ Needs

eXtended Reality (XR) autism research, ranging from Augmented Reality to Virtual Reality, focuses on socioemotional abilities and high-functioning autism. However common autism interventions address the entire spectrum over social, sensory and mediation issues. To bridge the gap between autism research and real interventions, we compared existing literature on XR and autism with stakeholders’ needs obtained by interviewing 34 skateholders, mainly practitioners. It allow us first to suggest XR use cases that could better support practitioners’ interventions, and second to derive design guidelines accordingly. Findings demonstrate that collaborative XR sensory-based and mediation approaches would benefit the entire spectrum, and encourage to consider the overall intervention context when designing XR protocols.

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