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Pardon? An Overview of the Current State and Requirements of Voice User Interfaces for Blind and Visually Impaired Users
Christina Oumard, Julian Kreimeier, Timo Götzelmann
TL;DR
Voice assistants may support everyday spoken information access for blind and visually impaired people, but their needs and implementation requirements warrant attention. This paper surveys BVI participants about assistant use and requirements, finding widespread use and perceived helpfulness alongside feature requests and privacy and security concerns.
Problem
The paper asks how suitable voice assistants are for BVI people and what could improve their acceptance and everyday benefit, amid varied existing systems and privacy concerns around online processing.
Source: Related Work · p. 2, Online Survey · p. 3, Surveys on Voice Assistants · p. 3Method
An online survey examined BVI participants’ voice-assistant use, experiences, helpful features, problems, and desired features.
Source: Online Survey · p. 3Results
Most surveyed BVI participants had used voice assistants and considered them helpful, with entertainment, internet access, and practical daily functions often used or appreciated.
Source: Results and Discussion · pp. 4–5, Conclusion and Future Work · p. 6Takeaways & Limitations
Participants’ requests and concerns point to smart-home integration, improved existing functions, voice input, and privacy-aware implementation, including offline processing as far as possible.
Source: Conclusion and Future Work · p. 6
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
People with special needs like blind and visually impaired (BVI) people can particularly benefit from using voice assistants providing spoken information input and output in everyday life. However, it is crucial to understand their needs and to include these in the development of accessible and useful assistance systems. By conducting an online survey with 145 BVI people, this paper revealed that common voice assistants like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa are used by a majority of BVI people and are also considered helpful. In particular, features in the context of audio entertainment, internet access and everyday life practical things like weather queries, time-related information (e.g. setting an alarm clock), checking calendar entries and taking notes are particularly often used and appreciated. The participants also indicated that the integration of smart home devices, the optimization of existing functionalities and voice input are important, but also potentially negative aspects such as data privacy and data security are relevant. Therefore, it seems particularly interesting to implement an online data processing as far as possible. Our results contribute to this development by providing an overview of empirically collected requirements for functions and implementation-related aspects.
Related Work
Prior work describes voice assistants as promising for BVI users but identifies accessibility and privacy concerns. Existing systems vary in their offline capabilities, while reviews and surveys document user needs and interaction challenges.
Related Work
- Existing BVI-focused assistants span online and offline processing, but fully offline examples have feature or interaction constraints and some systems are not designed specifically for BVI users.For example, some offline systems have limited vocabularies or button-only operation, while another lacks dialog management.Source: Related Work · p. 2
Surveys on Voice Assistants
- Reviews and user studies report accessibility problems including misrecognition, poor nonvisual feedback, and difficulty correcting errors, alongside the potential for voice assistants to support blind users.Blind users may also interpret and retrieve longer, more complex spoken responses than design guidelines assume.Source: Surveys on Voice Assistants · p. 2
- Prior surveys identify privacy, security, data collection, and monitoring concerns; the passage presents offline processing as a way such problems can be systemically avoided.Source: Surveys on Voice Assistants · p. 3
Online Survey
The online survey examined BVI participants’ use, experience, and unmet needs for voice assistants. It found broad uptake and perceived helpfulness, alongside requests for added functionality and concerns about recognition, connectivity, and privacy.
Online Survey
- The accessible online survey was sent through BVI organizations in Germany and known participants, and covered demographics, assistive devices, experience, feature ideas, and example dialogs.It comprised seven pages and fourteen questions; a flowchart depicts the questionnaire procedure.Source: Online Survey · p. 3, Figure 1 · p. 3
Results and Discussion
- Responses were cleaned and grouped into often-used, helpful, and new features; categories mentioned more than four times were considered for implementation, then features replaceable by common tools were removed.Figure 2 presents the evaluation procedure.Source: Results and Discussion · p. 4, Figure 2 · p. 4
- 88% of participants had used a voice assistant and 86% considered such systems helpful; Siri, Alexa, and Google were the most-used systems.Figure 3 presents the frequencies of individual assistants used by participants.Source: Results and Discussion · p. 4, Figure 3 · p. 4
- Auditory entertainment, internet and information requests, and practical functions such as weather, alarms, calendars, and timers were among the most-used features.The survey grouped examples such as music, audiobooks, and podcasts under auditory entertainment, and Google, Wikipedia, and general questions under internet requests.Source: Results and Discussion · pp. 4–5, Figure 4 · p. 5
- Participants often found entertainment, internet requests, calendars, alarms, weather, and timers helpful, and valued assistants for speed and independence.Some also appreciated needing fewer devices or not having to search for them.Source: Results and Discussion · p. 5
- Home automation was the most frequently mentioned area for new features, with requests also spanning navigation, more specific internet requests, and reading documents, displays, and packaging aloud.Source: Results and Discussion · p. 5
- Participants reported recognition and interpretation errors, problems with poor internet connections, nonresponse, language difficulties, and concerns about privacy, security, and continuous listening.Source: Results and Discussion · pp. 5–6
Conclusion and Future Work
The survey found that common voice assistants are used and considered helpful by a majority of BVI participants. Their reported feature needs and privacy and security concerns inform requirements for future assistance systems.
Conclusion and Future Work
- The survey of 145 BVI people found that common assistants were used by a majority and considered helpful, with audio entertainment, internet access, and everyday practical features often used and appreciated.Source: Conclusion and Future Work · p. 6
- Participants highlighted smart-home device integration, refinement of existing functions, voice input, and data privacy and security as relevant future considerations.The paper suggests implementing offline data processing as far as possible.Source: Conclusion and Future Work · p. 6