How can the standards community create safety standards that are more inclusive? UL Standards & Engagement (ULSE) has released a report showing how to make safety standards work better for both men and women alike, using VR headsets as an example. The report sets forth a methodology that standards development organizations (SDOs) can use to evaluate existing voluntary consensus standards for their ability to address safety hazards experienced by different genders.

During its research, ULSE pinpointed the standard UL 8400, Standard for Safety for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality Technology Equipment, as a suitable candidate for gender responsive evaluation, as female users may face “unique safety issues with virtual reality headsets that are difficult to account for in incident data or academic research.”

UL created a 3-step process to evaluate standards, including:

• A text-based analysis of an organization’s standards catalog for anthropometric requirements
• An examination of publicly available medical data
• An investigation of research articles

Using the methodology on the selected VR/AR headset safety standard, they discovered that women may face more safety risks like poor fit, discomfort, and motion sickness. ULSE reports that its findings are currently being reviewed by the ULSE technical committee responsible for maintenance of the standard. Authors of the report noted that members of the standards community have expressed frustration in attempts to update voluntary consensus standards for gender-responsiveness, without the data to support such efforts.

“This report was made partly in response to those concerns,” the researchers write. “It also demonstrates a process by which gender-related insights can be drawn from freely available sources, and serves as a viable proof-of-concept for other SDOs seeking to initiate gender-responsiveness.”