Reimagining the Augmented Reality Accessibility Ecosystem for Deaf Students: Service Provider Perspectives in Experiential Learning
In experiential learning environments, Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students often experience ``split attention,'' dividing their focus among tasks, instructors, and access providers. Augmented reality (AR) has been proposed as a means to centralize communication access within the student's field of view; however, little is known about how such systems affect the instructors, interpreters, and captioners who support access in these settings. We present a formative, expert-based evaluation of ARRAE, an AR-mediated communication access ecosystem, examining the experiences of an instructor, an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, and a real-time captioner in a simulated laboratory environment. Comparing in-person, traditional remote, and AR-mediated access, our findings suggest that AR reconfigures accessibility labor and interactional practices by redistributing communication, attention, and awareness across participants. While AR-mediated access supported integrated, in-situ communication and enhanced contextual awareness, it also altered interactional feedback mechanisms, such as gaze coordination and pacing, that support shared understanding during instruction. These observations highlight trade-offs between access, control, and coordination, and suggest that AR-mediated systems may be most effective when considered as part of a broader, hybrid ecosystem rather than as standalone replacements for existing modalities. This work contributes initial insights into how AR reshapes communication access in experiential learning and informs the design of systems that support coordinated, multi-user interaction in hands-on educational contexts.