The immersive graphics, large amount of user-generated content, and social interaction opportunities offered by popular virtual worlds, such as Second Life, could eventually make for a more interactive and informative World Wide Web. Unfortunately, virtual worlds are currently not accessible to users who are visually impaired. This paper presents the work on developing TextSL, a client for Second life that can be accessed with a screen reader. Users interact with TextSL using a command-based interface, which allows for performing a plethora of different actions on large numbers of objects and avatars; characterizing features of such virtual worlds. User studies confirm that a command-based interface is a feasible approach towards making virtual worlds accessible, as it allows screen reader users to explore Second Life, communicate with other avatars, and interact with objects as well as sighted users. Command-based exploration and object interaction is significantly slower, but communication can be performed with the same efficiency as in the Second Life viewer. We further identify that at least 31% of the objects in Second Life lack a descriptive name, which is a significant barrier towards making virtual worlds accessible to users who are visually impaired.
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