Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students often experience communication barriers in higher education, which are particularly acute in experiential learning environments such as laboratories. Traditional accessibility services, such as interpreting and captioning, often require DHH students to divide their attention between critical tasks, potential safety hazards, instructional materials, and access providers, creating trade-offs between safety and equitable communication. These demands can disrupt task engagement and increase cognitive load in settings that require sustained visual focus, highlighting the limitations of current approaches. To address these challenges, this study investigates Augmented Reality Real-Time Access for Education (ARRAE), an ecosystem based on augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, as a potential intervention for laboratory-based environments. By overlaying interpreters or captions directly into a student's field of view, AR enables the integration of accessibility into hands-on learning without compromising safety or comprehension. Through an empirical study with 12 DHH participants, we evaluate how AR-mediated access influences visual attention patterns and perceived cognitive load during hands-on tasks. The findings suggest that AR-mediated communication shows strong potential to improve attention management and communication accessibility in experiential learning environments, though participants emphasized that accessibility preferences are highly context-dependent. Participants also identified several design and ergonomic challenges, including display positioning, visual fatigue, and compatibility with hearing devices. Together, these results highlight both the promise of AR for supporting accessible participation in visually demanding environments and key design considerations for future systems.

翻译：聋哑及重听学生在高等教育中常面临沟通障碍，这一困境在实验室等体验式学习环境中尤为凸显。传统无障碍服务（如手语翻译和字幕）要求学生在关键操作任务、潜在安全风险、教学材料与无障碍服务提供者间分散注意力，导致安全与平等沟通需进行权衡取舍。这种注意力分配需求会干扰任务专注度，并在需要持续视觉聚焦的环境下增加认知负荷，凸显了现有方法的局限性。为应对上述挑战，本研究探索了基于增强现实智能眼镜构建的"增强现实实时教育接入"生态系统作为实验室环境潜在干预方案的效果。通过将手语翻译或字幕直接叠加至学生视野，增强现实技术能在不牺牲安全性与理解效果的前提下，将无障碍支持融入实践学习过程。基于12名聋哑参与者的实证研究，我们评估了增强现实介导的无障碍支持对实操任务中视觉注意力模式及感知认知负荷的影响。研究结果表明，增强现实介导的沟通在改善体验式学习环境中的注意力管理及沟通可及性方面展现出显著潜力，但参与者强调无障碍偏好具有高度情境依赖性。参与者同时指出了若干设计与人体工学挑战，包括显示定位、视觉疲劳及与助听设备的兼容性问题。这些发现共同揭示了增强现实技术在高视觉需求环境中促进无障碍参与的潜力，并为未来系统的关键设计提供了思考。