Accessible 360° Virtual Tours: SeekBeak's Work Published in the Journal of Advanced Technological Education
Picture a student who can't use a mouse. Maybe it's a motor impairment. Maybe they rely on a screen reader. Maybe small, precise finger movements on a tablet just aren't an option. Now hand that student an interactive 360° virtual tour.
On most platforms, that's where the field trip ends. The whole experience is built around dragging to look around and clicking small targets you have to find first.
On SeekBeak, the interactive 360° and 3D platform we've been building since 2014, that student gets the whole tour. They can explore with a keyboard, jump between hotspots with a shortcut key, steer with an Xbox Adaptive Controller, press and hold on a touchscreen, or read everything in a screen-reader-friendly Text Viewer. And that work has now been published in an academic journal.
Accessible 360° Virtual Tours, Documented in the Journal of Advanced Technological Education
The Journal of Advanced Technological Education (J ATE) is a peer-reviewed, open access technical journal that covers the teaching and learning of advanced technologies, including innovative pedagogical methods and related education research. Articles explore new educational activities, lab experiments, instructional methods, and pedagogies that can be adopted in community college curriculum. The periodical is particularly useful for technician training programs.
They have just published “Exploring Accessibility Features in SeekBeak: Making 360° Content More Inclusive” in Volume 6, Issue 1. The article walks through the accessibility features built into SeekBeak, maps each one to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and shows how they're being used in two-year college technician education and K-12 career exploration. (For the complete feature list and our conformance report, see our accessibility page.)
It's an author list we're very proud to be part of:
- Luis Perez, CAST, the nonprofit that created the UDL framework
- Shalee Hodgson, Impact Allies
- David Anderson, Resource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies (RECITE) and Impact Allies
- Matthew Chaussee, Be More Colorful (CareerViewXR)
- Timothy Allan, SeekBeak
RECITE is a national, multi-institution initiative funded by the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. It helps two-year colleges bring extended reality (XR) into technician classrooms.
We're quite proud of all this, and think this is a Big Deal™. We aren't aware of any other virtual tour platform whose accessibility features were shaped alongside the organization behind UDL, meets WCAG criteria and rules, has a published VPAT, and has been written up in an academic journal. It's a big part of why we see SeekBeak as a world leader in accessible interactive 360° content.
Luis Pérez, Director of Disability and Accessibility, CASTThe collaboration with SeekBeak demonstrates that accessibility and innovation can advance together. When accessibility is considered as a core component of the design process, not just a compliance step, immersive experiences become more engaging and usable for everyone.
Five Accessibility Features That Open Up 360° Virtual Tours
These features grew out of working meetings between SeekBeak, RECITE, and Be More Colorful, with WCAG and UDL as shared reference points. The goal was to build accessibility into the platform itself, instead of bolting it on at the end as a compliance checkbox.
1. Full Keyboard Navigation
Every part of the SeekBeak viewer works without a mouse. Arrow keys tilt and pan the scene, and Shift + arrow keys give finer control. Tab and Shift+Tab move through toolbar controls, navigation, and thumbnails, Enter or Space activates a control, and Escape closes dialogs. Overlay menus follow the WAI-ARIA menu pattern.
For creators, the nice part is that you can set a custom focus order and add screen-reader labels to your overlays without writing any code. Our original keyboard navigation guide walks through the basics, and our overlay tab order video shows the setup in under three minutes.
Who it helps: anyone who can't use a mouse, or would rather not.
2. Hotspot Shortcut Keys
Sweeping around a 360° scene hunting for points of interest is tedious with a mouse and exhausting without one. In SeekBeak, the . (Period) and , (Comma) keys jump straight from one hotspot to the next, and Space opens it.
Who it helps: people with motor impairments, and anyone who wants to get to the good stuff quickly in a busy scene.
3. Joystick and Adaptive Controller Support
Connect a USB or Bluetooth controller, including the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and SeekBeak will offer to turn it on. The thumbstick moves the camera, and holding the primary button activates hotspots.
Who it helps: people who rely on adaptive hardware and want to explore with a familiar, tactile setup.
4. Tap and Hold on Touch Devices
Tapping a tiny target and then dragging precisely is a real barrier on a phone or tablet. SeekBeak lets users press and hold to trigger the same action instead.
Who it helps: people with limited fine motor control. It's a small change that decides whether a touchscreen is usable at all.
5. The Accessible Text Viewer
This is the one we're proudest of. The Text Viewer automatically turns every hotspot, title, description, link, and image in an experience into a structured text document with clear headings and a logical reading order. It works for 360° images, flat images, 3D models, and Gaussian Splats alike. Because it's generated on demand, there's never a second version to build or keep up to date, and you can share a Text Viewer link directly.
Who it helps: screen reader users (it works with VoiceOver, NVDA, Narrator, ChromeVox, and TalkBack), and anyone who prefers to take in content as text rather than visual cues.
How SeekBeak's Features Map to WCAG and UDL
At the heart of the J ATE article is a mapping of each feature to specific WCAG success criteria and UDL principles. If you're working through a procurement checklist, here's the quick version:
| Feature | WCAG success criteria | UDL principles |
|---|---|---|
| Keyboard navigation | Operable: 2.1.1 Keyboard, 2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap, 2.4.3 Focus Order | Action & Expression, Engagement |
| Hotspot shortcut keys | Operable: 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks, 2.4.5 Multiple Ways | Action & Expression, Engagement |
| Joystick and adaptive controllers | Robust: support for assistive technologies | Action & Expression, Engagement |
| Tap and hold | Operable: 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures, 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation | Action & Expression, Engagement |
| Accessible Text Viewer | Perceivable and Operable: 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence, 2.4.6 Headings and Labels | Representation |
Source: Perez et al., Journal of Advanced Technological Education, Vol. 6, Issue 1 (2026), Table 1.
Built With Educators, Used in More Than 25 States
The accessibility features described in the article have been integrated into Be More Colorful's CareerViewXR platform, which delivers 360° career exploration programming to K-12 schools, CTE centers, and community colleges in more than 25 states. Students step inside real workplaces and communities to see what a career actually looks like, on any internet-connected device, using whichever input method works for them. Our Be More Colorful workforce development case study looks at how those experiences are built.
That's exactly the kind of use 360° virtual tours for education and training should support: every learner in the room taking the same virtual field trip.
Works Where Your Learners Are
Because SeekBeak runs in the browser with nothing to install, it works on desktops, laptops, kiosks, tablets, and phones using Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and other popular browsers. Keyboard support is available anywhere there's a physical or on-screen keyboard, so the same accessible experience follows your learners from the computer lab to the library to home.
Why This Matters for Schools and Government Agencies in the U.S. and EU
If you buy technology for a school district, college, or public agency, accessibility is a requirement. In the United States, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to use accessible information and communication technology, which means the vendors selling to them need to deliver it. The ADA and Section 504 set similar expectations for state and local governments, schools, and anyone receiving federal funding.
In Europe, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has required accessible digital products and services across the EU since June 2025, and the EU Web Accessibility Directive covers public sector websites and apps. Both lean on EN 301 549, the harmonized European standard for ICT accessibility, which builds on WCAG. We cover the details in what Section 508, the ADA, and the EAA mean for your 360° content.
In practice, procurement teams on both sides of the Atlantic want two things: documentation that a platform conforms to the standards, and confidence that those claims hold up. SeekBeak's Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT) is the International Edition, covering WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 Level AA, Revised Section 508, and EN 301 549 in a single document. The J ATE article adds something a vendor document can't: a published, citable account of how the features were designed and how they map to WCAG, co-written with CAST and an NSF-funded education partnership.
Available Today, and Still Improving
Everything described in the article is live in SeekBeak right now, and has been for months. Our customers and CareerViewXR's schools have been using these features every day while the article made its way through publication.
We're not done, either. We'll keep working with CAST, RECITE, Be More Colorful, and the educators and agencies who use SeekBeak to refine these features, add new ones, and keep our conformance report current as the standards evolve. If you run into a barrier or have an idea, we'd love to hear it.
You can read the full article (it's open access) on the Micro Nano Technology Education Center website, or cite it via DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22695854. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation under awards 2331451 through 2331455 and 2534496.
Key Takeaways
- SeekBeak's accessibility features are the subject of a 2026 article in the Journal of Advanced Technological Education, co-authored with CAST, RECITE, Impact Allies, and Be More Colorful.
- Viewers can explore 360° content using a keyboard, hotspot shortcut keys, adaptive controllers, tap and hold, or a screen-reader-friendly Text Viewer, and all of it is available today.
- Each feature is mapped to specific WCAG success criteria and UDL principles, which makes accessibility reviews much simpler.
- The features are integrated into CareerViewXR career exploration experiences used in K-12 schools, CTE centers, and community colleges in more than 25 states.
- Our International Edition VPAT covers WCAG, Revised Section 508, and EN 301 549, giving schools and agencies in the U.S. and EU solid documentation for Section 508, ADA, and European Accessibility Act requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
The article, “Exploring Accessibility Features in SeekBeak: Making 360° Content More Inclusive,” describes five accessibility features in the SeekBeak viewer (keyboard navigation, hotspot shortcut keys, joystick and adaptive controller support, tap and hold, and the Accessible Text Viewer) and maps each one to WCAG success criteria and UDL principles. It also describes how the features are used in two-year college technician education and in K-12 career exploration through CareerViewXR.
In SeekBeak, yes. Every viewer function works from the keyboard: arrow keys look around, Period and Comma cycle through hotspots, Space opens them, and Tab moves through the interface. Game controllers and the Xbox Adaptive Controller are supported too, and touchscreen users can press and hold instead of making precise drag gestures.
SeekBeak's Accessible Text Viewer generates a structured text version of any experience, with headings and a logical reading order, covering every hotspot, title, description, link, and image. It stays in sync with the tour automatically, and the viewer is compatible with VoiceOver, NVDA, Narrator, ChromeVox, and TalkBack.
SeekBeak publishes an Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT 2.5, International Edition) documenting support for WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 Level A and AA, Revised Section 508 for U.S. federal procurement, and EN 301 549, the harmonized standard behind the European Accessibility Act and the EU Web Accessibility Directive. You can download it from our accessibility page. As with any platform, you're still responsible for making sure the content you add, such as images, audio, and text, is accessible as well.
The Journal of Advanced Technological Education article maps each SeekBeak accessibility feature to UDL principles. Keyboard navigation, hotspot shortcut keys, adaptive controller support, and tap and hold give learners multiple ways to move through and interact with a scene, which supports Action & Expression and Engagement. The Accessible Text Viewer presents the same content as structured text, which supports Representation. Because all of these work in the same experience, a teacher can share one virtual field trip and let each student choose how to explore it.
Need Accessible 360° Content for Your School or Agency?
Download our Accessibility Conformance Report, or talk to us about your project.
