Empowering Independent Travel
Travel Independently by Public Transport
With real-world scenarios, participants build confidence and develop essential skills, including
Stress management -
Focus-
Navigate on your own -
Through this approach, Virtual OV increases mobility, promotes social inclusion, and strengthens executive functions. The end result is an increase in independence, quality of life, and economic opportunities for the users.
Who Benefits from Virtual OV?
Virtual OV is primarily designed for neurodivergent individuals and is used within educational institutions and healthcare facilities under the guidance of trained professionals.
However, the benefits of Virtual OV extend to:
Elderly individuals: seeking to maintain their mobility and independence.
Asylum seekers** who need to learn how to navigate and integrate into their new environment. * Anyone looking to increase their confidence and skills using **public transport**. Virtual OV offers a wide range of possibilities for improving **independent living skills** and enhancing **mobility** for diverse populations.
Impact
Getting familiar with public transport
Virtual OV aims to make users confident and lower the threshold for travelling by public transport. By recreating everyday travel situations in VR.
In this way, participants can practice safely and without limits before they actually hit the road by simulating everyday travel situations.
Development of Crucial Cognitive Skills
Travelling by public transport is more than just following routes. It requires mastering cognitive skills such as planning, problem-solving, and maintaining attention.
Virtual OV contributes to the development of these essential cognitive skills, making participants better prepared to travel independently.
Promoting social inclusion
Another important goal is to promote social inclusion. Virtual OV prepares participants for social interactions on public transport, giving them more confidence in interacting with fellow passengers and staff. This opens the door to greater social inclusion and better participation in society.
Stress Reduction and Anxiety Management
New situations can cause anxiety and stress. In Virtual OV, participants become familiar with unexpected situations within public transport, such as delays or the loss of their ticket. As a result, they are better prepared and more confident when they actually take the step to travel.
Within Virtual OV
The structure of the levels teaches you step-by-step how to tackle various challenges during your journey. For example:
- Navigating with the trip planner
- Dealing with a delayed train
- Selecting the right bus for your trip
After each level, the challenges increase in complexity. Additionally, each level offers the option to manually adjust the amount of stimuli, for those seeking a challenge. Of course, the stimuli can also be reduced for those who prefer to start more gradually.
What Makes Virtual OV Different? 6DoF VR Technology
Virtual OV distinguishes itself through the use of 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) VR technology. This advanced technology optimizes the training of executive functions, which are often underdeveloped in our target participants.
Key executive functions trained include:
Time management: Arriving on time at the bus stop.
Sustained attention: Pressing the STOP button at the correct time.
Planning and prioritization: Effectively using the trip planner app.
-
Promoting social inclusion
-
Becoming self-reliant
-
6 degrees of freedom
-
Promoting social inclusion
-
Becoming self-reliant
-
6 degrees of freedom
From idealism to reality!
Virtual OV was born out of our ideal of providing neurodivergent people with learning experiences for traveling by public transport, making them more self-reliant.
Joke de Haan, a teacher in special education and behavioural specialist, is the initiator of this project and involved in its development. In addition, various experts in the field of education and technology are involved and prominent public transport companies have actively participated in the development of Virtual OV.
Our plug & play solution only requires a VR headset with accompanying software. According to the train-the-trainer principle, we offer a training program, in which we teach supervisors how to assist clients during the use of Virtual OV.
Our Partners:
