To investigate preferences for mobile and wearable sound awareness systems, we conducted an online survey with 201 DHH participants. The survey explores how demographic factors affect perceptions of sound awareness technologies, gauges interest in specific sounds and sound characteristics, solicits reactions to three design scenarios (smartphone, smartwatch, head-mounted display) and two output modalities (visual, haptic), and probes issues related to social context of use. While most participants were highly interested in being aware of sounds, this interest was modulated by communication preference-that is, for sign or oral communication or both. Almost all participants wanted both visual and haptic feedback and 75% preferred to have that feedback on separate devices (e.g., haptic on smartwatch, visual on head-mounted display). Other findings related to sound type, full captions vs. keywords, sound filtering, notification styles, and social context provide direct guidance for the design of future mobile and wearable sound awareness systems.

The home is filled with a rich diversity of sounds from mundane beeps and whirs to dog barks and children's shouts. In this paper, we examine how deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people think about and relate to sounds in the home, solicit feedback and reactions to initial domestic sound awareness systems, and explore potential concerns. We present findings from two qualitative studies: in Study 1, 12 DHH participants discussed their perceptions of and experiences with sound in the home and provided feedback on initial sound awareness mockups. Informed by Study 1, we designed three tablet-based sound awareness prototypes, which we evaluated with 10 DHH participants using a Wizard-of-Oz approach. Together, our findings suggest a general interest in smarthome-based sound awareness systems particularly for displaying contextually aware, personalized and glanceable visualizations but key concerns arose related to privacy, activity tracking, cognitive overload, and trust. CCS CONCEPTS •Human-centered computing-Empirical studies in accessibility •Human-centered computing-Accessibility technologies KEYWORDS Deaf and hard of hearing, smart home, sound awareness.