From Challenge to Innovation: How Virtual Reality Is Reshaping My Work and Life

Life is about transitions—some we choose, and others choose us.

For those who don’t know me personally, I’ve lived my entire life with a visual impairment. As a child, strong-prescription glasses allowed me to navigate the world. But as I’ve grown older, my useful vision has declined progressively. This year, I made the deeply personal decision to give up driving, realizing that challenges like depth perception, low-light blindness, and difficulty reading road signs were no longer safe to ignore.

These changes haven’t been easy—especially as someone whose profession as a CEO, after decades of programming and innovating, demands navigating content-rich environments, reviewing source code and product information, and communicating across multiple channels. I’ve always worked at the speed of my fingers, and relying on traditional assistive technologies like zoomed screens or text-to-speech feel cumbersome, slowing me down in ways I never imagined tolerating.

What I didn’t anticipate was how one unexpected gift—a Meta Quest 3 VR headset—would transform not just my work but my life.

How VR Became My Assistive Tool

When I first put on the headset, I was overwhelmed by what I could see. For the first time in years, I could control the size, scale, and lighting of everything around me. Text that was unreadable became clear with a simple "grab and zoom." Virtual keyboards scaled to meet the needs of my hands, not the other way around. My issues with binocular vision found relief as I began to perceive 3D environments in ways I never could offline.

In VR, I’m not hindered by my impairment. I’m empowered.

This accidental discovery led me not only to embrace VR personally but to consider what it could mean for my company, its employees, and our clients. We quickly realized that virtual reality wasn’t just a tool for gaming—it was a platform for innovation, collaboration, and accessibility.

Building the Future: VR at the Core of Our Company

Earlier this year, we committed to a bold new step: adopting Arthur Pro VR on Meta Quest 3 devices across the company. Now, we have a virtual campus where our globally distributed team collaborates as if we were all in the same physical office space. VR has allowed us to:

• Maximize collaboration: Employees can work together in virtual spaces equipped with tools like whiteboards, pinboards, 3D modeling objects, shareable browsers, and more.

• Host immersive events: Our company town hall meetings now happen fully in VR, complete with AI-assisted tools to facilitate alignment, brainstorming, and vision-casting.

• Enhance creativity and focus: Employees have personalized their workspaces with virtual furniture, plants, and visual boards, fostering a sense of presence and reducing distractions.

• Improve well-being: We encourage employees to explore VR fitness and mindfulness apps, promoting physical movement and mental health.

And we’re just getting started. We're not only using VR for internal collaboration but also envisioning exciting ways to engage with clients. Soon, we’ll host virtual expos and immersive client-focused events that can be joined through web portals or with VR headsets.

Developing the Next Generation of VR Applications

As technology leaders, we see VR not just as a tool for today but as a platform to reshape the future. In the coming months, we plan to expand into VR application development, focusing on areas like:

• Enterprise Asset Management: Bringing traditionally 2D asset data into 3D environments to facilitate training, modeling, and maintenance activities enhanced by extended reality (XR).

• Accessibility Solutions: Exploring how VR can benefit individuals with visual impairments by offering scalable, immersive environments that empower them to interact with the world in new ways.

Meta’s groundbreaking devices, like their Ray-Ban glasses with AI-powered assistive technology (e.g., "Be My Eyes"), are already paving the way for independence for the visually impaired. We aim to build on these advancements to create tools that help others like me not just adapt but thrive.

Reframing Perceptions: Why You Might See Me in a VR Headset

One important point I want to address is the perception of VR. To many, virtual reality is still synonymous with gaming, and seeing someone wear a headset in a business meeting might seem unusual or even frivolous. But for me, this technology is as essential as my white cane or my prescription eyewear.

It’s not a toy; it’s a lifeline.

When I join online meetings from our virtual office wearing a VR headset, it’s because it allows me to "see" in a way I can’t with traditional screens or print. It creates an environment where I’m not limited by my impairment—where I can fully engage and lead.

Pulling It All Together

Virtual reality has given me more than just a tool. It’s given me the ability to stay at the helm of a company I’ve been building for decades while continuing to innovate and lead with confidence. It’s allowed me to see and experience things I thought I’d lost forever—from live immersive French lessons in a virtual restaurant to sharing vision boards with my team in a way that feels deeply personal and impactful.

More importantly, it’s reminded me of the power of technology—not just to enhance productivity but to empower individuals.

To anyone facing challenges—whether personal or professional—I hope this story reminds you that innovation can sometimes come from the least expected places. And to our clients and partners, I hope this gives you clarity about why we believe so deeply in the power of VR and what it can do for all of us.

The future is immersive, and I’m so proud to be building it with my team.

Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear from you:

• Have you explored VR in your work or personal life?

• Do you know someone whose life has been transformed by assistive technology?

Let’s continue sharing and learning. Together, we can make technology work for everyone.