Differences in presence between healthy users and users with multiple sclerosis

We are investigating how persons with mobility impairments due to multiple sclerosis (MS) experience the sense of presence in a Virtual Environment (VE). Since the mid 90´s, virtual reality (VR) research has produced a rich knowledge of how design and interaction features of VEs affect presence. However, to our knowledge almost all of the previous research studies have been conducted only with healthy persons. Thus, it is not known how these factors affect the presence of mobility impaired persons, which could have implications for VR-based rehabilitation. To begin investigating this, we replicated a classic VR experiment that has been replicated many times before, but we ran the study with a different population: 10 persons with mobility impairments caused by MS and another 5 healthy persons of similar demographics (e.g., age) as our MS population. This paper compares how these two groups experience presence and discusses the differences we found in our study.