Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Cultural Site. Its unique beauty, ecological variety, archeological history, and expert staff make it a true national treasure. However, some of the attractions are only partially accessible and others are inaccessible to people with mobility impairments. Information about facilities for the handicapped at the Park and in the surrounding area can be incomplete and difficult to obtain. These factors make Mesa Verde a recreational resource that is underutilized by handicapped people, their families, and their friends.We propose to develop an interactive web-based Virtual Reality tour of MVNP. This will be the first in a series of programs providing detailed, immersive, multidimensional, virtual experiences of exemplary National Parks for persons with mobility impairments. The target audience for this prototype program will be young women and men - ages 14 to 30 - with Spinal Cord Injuries. In addition to the experiential aspects of the program, we will provide online trip planning services for people with disabilities. We expect that these personalized features, along with linkages to Park information, and guides to accessible accommodations, will promote and enable visits to the Park for segments of our target audience.Summary of Anticipated Results and Implications:Individual interviews and focus groups with target group members and an expert panel of consultants will be undertaken during the design stage of the project. In addition to these formative research activities a small scale randomized trial will be conducted with SCI patients. The summative research will provide information about short and intermediate term outcomes and viewer preferences for three packaging approaches. We will use these findings to plan a Phase II project that will include virtual tours of other parks and historical sites in the Southwest Region, along with travel planning information tailored for other groups of persons with mobility impairments.Potential Commercial Applications. The 44 million persons with physical disabilities represent significant niche markets for Virtual Reality based recreation products and leisure planning services. Marketing to schools, special education programs, rehabilitation facilities, handicapped persons, libraries, bookstores, and online services is planned. Sales will be via hybrid CD-ROM, web-subscriptions, Internet-advertising, and collaborative ventures with service providers for persons with mobility impairments.
