Blind Leading the Sighted

Abstract

Voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) are becoming smaller, cheaper, and more accurate, such that they are now prevalent in homes (e.g., Amazon Echo, Sonos One) and on mobile devices (e.g., Google Assistant, Apple Siri) around the world. VAPAs offer considerable potential to individuals who are blind, offering efficiencies over gesture-based input on touchscreen devices. However, research is just beginning to reveal the ways in which these technologies are used by people who are blind. In the first of two studies, we interviewed 14 blind adults with experience of home and/or mobile-based VAPAs, surfacing myriad accessibility, usability, and privacy issues for this community. A second study analyzing podcast content from 28 episodes relating to blind interactions with VAPAs was then undertaken to validate and extend findings from the first study. In addition to verifying prior findings, we learned that blind users wanted to leverage VAPAs for more productivity-oriented tasks and increased efficiency over other interaction modalities. We conclude that (1) VAPAs need to support a greater variety of AI personas, each specializing in a specific type of task; (2) VAPAs need to maintain continuity of voice interaction for both usability and accessibility; and (3) blind VAPA users, and especially blind technology podcasters, are expert voice interface users who should be incorporated into design processes from the beginning. We argue that when the blind lead the sighted through voice interface design, both blind and sighted users can benefit.

Effectiveness of Using Voice Assistants in Learning: A Study at the Time of COVID-19

“…These results support those found in other research on: the use of advanced learning technologies in the LMS as a good resource for learning regulation [13]; the use of advanced technologies in LMS learning with personalized attention [2,12,14]; the use of PBL in LMS environments for increasing collaborative work [6,7]; and the use of LMS with additional technologies, which, together with a pedagogical model similar to the one applied in this study [15], increased the motivation and the effectiveness of learning among students [3]. In addition, specifically in the group with access to an IPA, greater satisfaction was found with the teaching-learning process [22], with teacher guidance in the teaching-learning process [23,24], and greater general satisfaction [44].…”

“…Regarding the studies on the usability assessment of IPAs, users have indicated that interfaces must be adapted to the needs of each task [23,24]. IPAs that include holograms are under evaluation as learning aids [25,26].…”

Reliability of Commercial Voice Assistants’ Responses to Health-Related Questions in Noncommunicable Disease Management: Factorial Experiment Assessing Response Rate and Source of Information

“…In addition, VAs leverage speech-based interaction, which makes information lookup more efficient and accessible compared to classical methods (eg, desktop web search [11,12]). This is particularly the case in situations in which users have their hands occupied [13][14][15][16][17], lack reading and writing skills [18], or suffer from visual, motor, or cognitive inabilities [19][20][21][22][23][24] and cannot access information on display devices, such as smartphones, desktops, or tablets. Hence, VAs are a powerful alternative to provide chronic patients with easy access to information about NCD management.…”

“…This may reflect a tendency to transfer the responsibility of information retrieval to the patients, whereas they are in charge of choosing (the most) reliable information source. As we believe in the potential of VAs in increasing the accessibility of health information by vocally interacting with patients having their hands occupied or with disabilities [13][14][15][16][17][19][20][21][22][23][24], we urge Apple to consider favoring voice responses over lists of results to make the information search more suitable for hands-free interaction.…”

“…In our study, we considered only voice responses. The rationale behind this decision is that the use of VAs for (health-related) information lookup is truly advantageous and accessible if it can breach the barriers of lack of literacy [18]; visual, motor, or cognitive inabilities [19][20][21][22][23][24]; or manual unavailability [13][14][15][16][17]. Only Yang et al [31] reported whether the VAs provided a voice response.…”