Virtual Reality at the Service of people’s Autonomy

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer brain injuries of various origins, leading to cognitive and/or sensorimotor disorders, and representing the leading cause of loss of autonomy; just as many suffer from anxiety disorders, which have a major impact on their daily lives. As a result, there is a pressing need for effective methods and tools to assess the abilities of people with disabilities, and to plan rehabilitation interventions. The literature shows that virtual reality technologies enable new approaches to this type of care, notably through the simulation of activities of daily living.

Since the early 1990s, researchers and therapists have been taking advantage of the possibilities offered by virtual reality concepts and technologies to study and treat human dysfunctions, providing new interaction spaces and increasingly diverse immersion conditions.

The field of health and disability is a promising area of application in which the integration of these technologies raises many questions, both in terms of understanding human functioning, simulating tasks and virtual worlds, and interfacing the participant with the virtual world, all with the aim of designing therapeutic methods and tools. The aim is to ensure that people can function more effectively in their daily lives, and regain a certain level of autonomy.

The needs "for and around" the disabled person are numerous, due to the variety of disabilities and needs, the possibilities of intervention with these people (therapy, rehabilitation, stimulation, compensation) and the needs of caregivers, carers and educators. They are also specific to pathological contexts. The field began with trial and error, the development of initial tools, successes but also failures, the identification of the need for research and consolidation, and the elaboration of hypotheses. Today, these tools are in widespread use, and studies are examining the extent to which they meet a certain number of criteria, from the adaptation of devices to the people being treated, to the impact of interventions on everyday functioning.

The aim of this article is to describe why and how virtual reality can be put to use in the service of health and disability in the specific fields of behavioral, cognitive and sensorimotor disorders. Following a presentation of the fundamental concepts of virtual reality, its use will be studied in these different contexts of disability management. Some tools and work will be described, with a focus on the VAP-S clinical validation process. In conclusion, the article will offer some perspectives and open up the field of healthcare training.