City4All
Learning Inclusion Through Play
Built With, Not For:
A Co-Design Journey
Conceived for classrooms and youth programs, City4All invites students and educators to encounter the city from new vantage points and to acknowledge inclusion as a shared responsibility. From its inception, the project has been carried out through co-design with CPD and individuals with sensory and motor disabilities via Design Thinking workshops.
Their lived experience informed the what, the how, and most importantly the why. Ensuring interactions that remain respectful, meaningful, and firmly rooted in reality.
From Friction to Flow:
Navigating the City
The VR journey unfolds across three immersive experiences: visual impairment, hearing impairment, and motor disability. Each capturing everyday challenges that often go unseen.
Players navigate a familiar urban path toward a stadium concert, discovering how small design decisions, public services, and social attitudes can either remove barriers or quietly reinforce them. Visual language, sound design, and interaction cues were all chosen to mirror the logic of each condition: abstract silhouettes and audio-reactive cues stand in for sight; calibrated color saturation and lip-reading cues emphasize visual communication in the absence of sound; mobility constraints foreground spatial planning, ramp access, signage, and timing.
Rather than simulating “deficit,” City4All surfaces systems - physical, digital, and social - that can empower or exclude.
City4All is a research-driven VR project developed within the EU “TrialsNet: TRials supported by Smart Networks beyond 5G” initiative. Led by EURIX with Wind Tre Italia and CPD - Consulta per le Persone in Difficoltà, the project explores a simple idea with powerful impact: can we play with disability to learn empathy, agency, and inclusion?
We delivered the end-to-end artistic pipeline for the Deaf and Blind experiences - from shaders, lighting, VFX, and in-engine integration - while Dr. Michael Golembewski led the UX design. The project was also presented by CPD at Torino Comics, bringing City4All’s message of inclusion to a broader public.