Welcome to Virtual OV!
Virtual OV (OV stands for Public Transport in Dutch) is a Virtual Reality platform developed for neurodivergent people, such as those with autism, mild intellectual disabilities, or other neurological diversities. The goal is to help these individuals become more self-reliant and confident when using public transportation.
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 is Virtual OV for?
Virtual OV has been developed for neurodivergent people, who are trained under supervision in a safe environment within educational or healthcare institutions.
However, the impact of Virtual OV goes beyond just this target group. For example, it can also benefit elderly people who want to maintain their mobility or asylum seekers who want to orient themselves in their new environment.
Virtual OV offers a wide range of possibilities and is available for anyone who needs to increase their independence and mobility.
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 us different
With Virtual OV we distinguish ourselves by using 6 degrees of freedom technology within our VR learning platform.
6DoF gives us the opportunity to optimally train the executive functions of the users, which are often underdeveloped in the intended participants. Executive functions include:
- Time management (be on time at the bus stop, if late the bus will be gone)
- Maintaining attention (pressing the STOP button in time)
- Planning and prioritization (planningusing the trip planner app)
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.
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