Since the emergence of virtual reality (VR) technologies, many researchers have argued on the benefits of their use for people with intellectual and multiple disabilities. However, up to this date there is not a single study that presents a detailed overview of the state of the art in virtual reality as a support tool for the treatment of people with intellectual and multiple disabilities, as well as Autism and Down Syndrome. The aim of this study is to provide a detailed overview of the state of the art in the virtual reality area focusing on people with multiple disabilities, that encompasses intellectual and physical disabilities. There is still no consensus on the effectiveness of VR-based treatments. Virtual reality can offer rich environment and features, but most of the researches focuses only in the experience to be inside a virtual place without taking advantage of what benefits VR provide us. Furthermore, most of our selected studies used non-immersive VR and AR. Thus, immersive VR is an open field with many opportunities to be explored. We believe VR has great potential to be effective in the treatment of people with intellectual and multiple disabilities.

Abstract. This study investigated the efficacy of a virtual reality-based cognitive and motor coordination training for people with intellectual and multiple disabilities, focusing on community participation. Ten people with disabilities were selected from an institutional care for people with disabilities and they were enrolled in a five-week experiment, which consisted in shopping in a virtual reality supermarket. The results show that the patients demonstrated statistically significant improvements regarding the task gave, also based on the observational analysis of the instructor and physiotherapist. Thus, the analysis indicates that the VR-based method can be effective in the cognitive development of those patients, improving their social inclusion and cognitive skills.

This study investigated the potential of using a virtual reality-based motor coordination and cognitivetraining for people with intellectual and multiple disabilities, focusing on their autonomy and communityparticipation. A low-cost innovative interaction interface between the user and the virtual environment wasproposed to provide a more realistic and intuitive interaction experience. Nine people with disabilities wereselected from an institutional care for people with disabilities and they were enrolled in a four-week experiment,which consisted in going through three challenges. The results show that the patients demonstrated statisticallysignificant improvements regarding the task gave, also based on the observational analysis of the instructorand physiotherapist. Thus, the analysis indicates that the VR-based method can be effective in the motordevelopment of those patients, improving their autonomy and cognitive skills.

This study addresses people’s resistance to using self-service terminals, especially bank ATMs. Many bank customers prefer seeking assistance from other people or auxiliary professionals when using an ATM. It was observed that this rejection or difficulty of use is not always directly related to bad interface designs of these self-service systems. An in-depth research was conducted, involving observation and a survey on-site at three bank branches in Brazil using the Contextual Inquiry method.The research used the contingency coefficient as a statistical method to determine the magnitude of the correlation between psychological and behavioral factors and ATM aversion.The results verified the existence of Self-service Aversion, which is the tendency of some to prefer human service instead of automated service, and is built upon four main constructs: sense of uncertainty, environment, sense of accountability, and user interface design. It was concluded that user experience is influenced by psychological and behavioral factors, such as expectations, cognition, emotion, motivation, and social context, impacting effectiveness and usability.