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In this blog piece Open University User Experience Designer Anna Chistyakova writes about the steps being taken to ensure that the right accessibility features are built into the development of the virtual courtroom. Virtual reality (VR) courtrooms, once confined to science fiction, now stand at the forefront of technological innovation, promising to transform the traditional courtroom experience. By moving into a virtual space, courts may enable participants to engage in a more immersive, efficient, and

Virtual reality (VR) refers to a technology that creates a three-dimensional computer simulated environment that can be experienced through a headset or with a computer using a monitor, keyboard, or mouse (Carkiroglu et al, 2019). This simulated environment is designed to replicate real-life settings such as in our case a virtual courtroom. VR technology uses computer-generated graphics and sounds to create a sense of immersion within the environment (Dede, 2017). It facilitates the user to

Dr Ahmed Kadry and Simon Hull, who both work in the Department for Policing at The Open University (OU), have recently finished a project that evaluated OU policing apprentice’s experiences of learning in a virtual reality (VR) courtroom. The VR courtroom was initially developed by the OU’s Open Justice Centre in partnership with Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, to allow law students to engage in virtual mooting and develop courtroom presentation skills.  The OU policing project,

Open Justice Centre Intern Teah Zdanowicz writes about recent virtual court hearings for this new blog. The launch of the metaverse by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 came with much trepidation. The technological advances of the last 20 years have moved at lightning speed without much time to catch-up. We started off this century with phones which were only used for texting, phoning, or an extremely grainy picture and now we can use smartphones to

Teah Zdanowicz, Open Justice Centre wrote this blog for World Day of Social Justice in 2023. Law captures the essence of the moment, a moment so small only affecting a few or a moment so impactful that its effects ripple around the world and change the lives of many. The law is a powerful tool, it has the power to take and the power to give. On this World Day of Social Justice, it is