The Status of Smart Home Appliances Usage and Requirements for Improving Accessibility among People with Visual Impairment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of using smart home appliance and improvement requirements from the accessibility perspective, targeting 408 visually impaired people. The main results of this study are as follows. First, 46.1% of respondents have experienced using smart home appliances. The most used smart home appliances were TVs and air conditioners. Second, about 64.8% of respondents had experienced linking smart home appliances with mobile devices or apps. Third, accessibility and function are the important factors in the purchase decision of smart home appliances, whereas high cost was mentioned the most as the reason for non-use. Fourth, to improve the accessibility of smart home appliances, 'voice-based recognition and output', continuous software development and update that is easily accessible even for the visually impaired, and screen design for anyone to use were proposed. This study makes contributions that it investigated the accessibility problem of smart home appliances, which had not been studied in the past, targeting the visually impaired on a large scale and suggests implications