Empowering requirements elicitation for populations with special needs by using virtual reality

Requirements elicitation is the process of discovering requirements for a system by accessing available knowledge sources and communicating with stakeholders who have a direct or indirect influence on such requirements. Although requirements elicitation is by no means a new concept and many techniques are available for this activity (e.g., interviews, observations, focus groups, questionnaires), there is no silver bullet which guarantees collecting a set of complete and correct requirements. When software is being developed for a special needs population, individuals with mental or physical impairments, the task becomes even tougher. In this scenario, techniques other than the traditional ones must be used to support the elicitation process. To ease the task of collecting requirements from special needs populations, we propose the use of Virtual Reality (VR) environments as elicitation technique. Our research is not to propose that VR is the silver bullet for collection of requirements; however, VR can definitely complement other elicitation techniques to develop a complete set of requirements specification. The following proposal explains the benefits of VR, why it can be useful with elicitation activities, how it can benefit special needs population, and what it can contribute towards the requirements process.