A Deeper, Larger View

My virtual community has invaded our living room. Has yours?

Virtual Ability in Second Life® is a group. Virtual Ability, Inc. is also a nonprofit organization registered in Colorado, USA. Most vitally, though, the people that ARE Virtual Ability are a community, a virtual community that extends around the world, across time zones and cultures and languages.

There are many ways to define a community. Most definitions include things like social ties, shared common perspectives, and shared actions or interactions in a shared setting.  Sociologists include things like ethnicity and language, caste and social divisions. Historians include settlement history and conflict history. Economists throw in interconnected livelihood strategies, and anthropologists add cultural factors, values, and shared cultural beliefs.

Peter Block’s 2008 book “Community: The Structure of Belonging” takes a look at community, and at the creation of communities, from a slightly different angle. My supper table discussion focused on how members of the community at Virtual Ability in Second Life® discover/figure out/create/ learn ways to “belong” and feel connected to people physically residing all over the world. Block names shared experiences, shared contexts, and the back-and-forth of listening/ paying attention to each other as the critical aspects of a community that offers the power to transform us from isolated to together, from disconnected to connected.

When Virtual Ability started, the founders recognized how easily disability can get in the way of connecting. So, one part of Virtual Ability’s mission is to provide people with disabilities with a supportive environment so they can enter and thrive in virtual worlds. Accessibility, universal design, and assistive technology are part Virtual Ability, but the sense of belonging seems the most significant reality.

Connecting? Belonging? Listening? Sharing? Inclusivity? Freedom? Equality? Those are some of the things that I talk about when I describe my friendships and my experiences in-world. How would you describe the sense of community that certainly seems to make Virtual Ability unique?

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Colorado, USA. Our mission is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds like Second Life®. Visit www.virtualability.org

Books that are virtually free?

 Not only virtually free, but virtually books!

The Library at Cape Serenity in Second Life® (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cape%20Serenity/86/123/23) is a specialty collection of books by people with disabilities. It includes many classics and it also features originals by authors who are members of various Second Life® groups or communities. You can read, or even take free copies of books by author such as Dostoyevsky (who had epilepsy), George Bernard Shaw (who had a learning disability), Isaac Asimov (who had autism spectrum disorder), or many others. You’ll also notice artwork by visual artists with disabilities, including pieces by members of Virtual Ability, as well as other famous artists like Claude Monet (vision disability), and Van Gogh (mental illness.)

The collection, put together with creativity and energy by Cape Serenity’s manager, avatar Ladyslipper Constantine, celebrates the diversity and capabilities of persons with disabilities from all over the world. Local authors from the Virtual Ability community share works such as “Headless Horseman” (Ronin1 Shippe), or “Poems” (Huber Grantly). As one of the properties of Virtual Ability, Inc. in Second Life®, Cape Serenity is a beautiful, quiet residential island featuring ponds, wildlife, gardens, and plenty of shoreline. On the patio of the Library, friends and members of Virtual Ability community in Second Life® can gather for poetry readings, book discussions, and other special events.

As a key part of Virtual Ability, Inc.'s mission to help make virtual worlds like Second Life® accessible to, and supportive of, individuals with disabilities, it has developed into a diverse community that includes people with disabilities, professionals, service providers, and others who care about issues of disability.

Since entering Second Life® in 2007, the Virtual Ability community has grown to include over 850 people. While Cape Serenity features an amazing specialty library, avatars can also visit an art museum over at Cape Able, a tavern and swimming pool at our apartments, or training areas, a playground, and an award winning Orientation Path designed for newcomers to virtual worlds, at Virtual Ability Island.

Virtually free virtual books are exciting. And, they’re just a small part of the excitement of Virtual Ability.

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Colorado, USA. Our mission is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds like Second Life®. Visit www.virtualability.org

Is 260 sit-ups too many?

 It’s not if you’re an avatar working out at the Fitness Center over on Virtual Ability’s Healthinfo Island. Of course, the issue of finding an accessible fitness center in your local town or city is a whole other challenge. Everyone benefits from regular exercise!

In a recent article on the Disability.gov website, an article entitled “Disability Connection: 10 ways to Stay Healthy and Well-thy” https://www.disability.gov/disability-connection-newsletter-february/ offered helpful tips. And, the Northwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury System at the University of Washington School of Rehabilitative Medicine http://sci.washington.edu/info/newsletters/articles/09_fall_fitness_centers.asp provides a downloadable article with additional tips, as well as a Fitness Center Accessibility Checklist and a quick review of your civil rights (USA) to equal access.

While most of us won’t manage 260 sit-ups anywhere other than in a virtual world, it’s not a bad idea to become aware of the options, challenges, and proven approaches to accessing fitness centers wherever we live.

At Healthinfo Island, however, there are some added benefits to a quick virtual workout. One benefit? Lack of sweat! Another? After you stretch and cool-down, you can browse an herb garden, learn about healthy eating, or explore interactive walk-through poster sessions on timely health and wellness topics. There’s even a Research Pavilion nearby, where people with disabilities in Second Life® are invited to participate in and become aware of various research projects being implemented by universities and other organizations around the world.

Using a fitness center at Healthinfo Island is easy. Finding one that works for you in your regular life might take a bit more patience, persistence, advocacy, and work. But then, improved accessibility benefits everyone.

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Colorado, USA. Our mission is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds like Second Life®. Visit www.virtualability.org