Big World, Little Me: Comparing a First-Person VR Walkthrough Video and Static Slides for Communicating Height-Related Accessibility Barriers

Overview & Synopsis

People with dwarfism and other forms of short stature may encounter barriers created by fixed-height environments and discriminatory social assumptions. This paper evaluates Big World, Little Me, a 10 min 52 s first-person walkthrough recorded from a Unity-based VR environment. The narrative depicts domestic reachability, public-transport, and employment barriers. In a non-randomised between-subjects study, 100 participants aged 15--48 years viewed either the fixed-duration audiovisual walkthrough or a silent, self-paced 27-slide presentation representing the same principal events. Narrative engagement was higher for the walkthrough ($M=5.54$, $SD=0.51$) than for the slides ($M=4.24$, $SD=0.73$), mean difference $=1.30$, 95% CI [1.05, 1.55], Hedges' $g=2.05$, $p