Abstract
The Internet of Things approaches applied in the context of home automation have been an important promise to improve the lives of users with visual impairments. However, there are few research studies that result in well-established techniques and guidelines for making these applications accessible for use with screen reading software or other adjustments required by visually impaired users. This article presents an analysis of design features to help design more affordable mobile home automation applications for visually impaired users. The analysis was carried out through tests by seven visually impaired users on a prototype developed in previous studies. Despite the limitations in the proof-of-concept prototype used in this study, users found the application promising and highlighted the need for improvements in the field, highlighting the opportunities to provide home automation applications to enhance independent living scenarios. The article also shows the challenges to be faced in these applications, considering the current limitations with support for mobile interaction through screen readers for applications that are very intensive in terms of dynamic elements and the need for immediate and accurate feedback.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abascal J (2004) Ambient intelligence for people with disabilities and elderly people. In: ACM’S special interest group on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI), Ambient intelligence for scientific discovery (AISD) workshop, Vienna
Afif M, Ayachi R, Pissaloux E, Said Y, Atri M (2020) Indoor objects detection and recognition for an ict mobility assistance of visually impaired people. Multimedia Tools and Applications 79(41):31645–31662
Alam T, A Salem A, Alsharif AO, Alhujaili AM (2020) Smart home automation towards the development of smart cities. Tanweer Alam. Abdulrahman A. Salem. Ahmad O. Alsharif. Abdulaziz M. Alhujaili.” Smart Home Automation Towards the Development of Smart Cities.” Computer Science and Information Technologies 1(1)
Albacete PL, Chang SK, Polese G (1998) Iconic language design for people with significant speech and multiple impairments. In: Assistive technology and artificial intelligence, Springer, pp 12–32
American Foundation for the Blind: Learning about blindness. https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-visionhttps://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision (2021). Accessed: 2021-06
Berners-Lee T Accessibility - w3c. http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility (1999). Accessed: 2021-06
Carvalho LP, Ferreira LP, Peruzza BPM, Souza FS, FLP, Freire AP (2016) Accessible smart cities? inspecting the accessibility of brazilian municipalities’ mobile applications. In: Proceedings of the Brazilian symposium in human factors in computer systems, pp 1–10
Chiti S, Leporini B (2012) Accessibility of android-based mobile devices: A prototype to investigate interaction with blind users. In: International conference on computers for handicapped persons, Springer, pp 607–614
Choras M, Kozik R, D’Antonio S, Iannello G, Jedlitschka A, Miesenberger K, Vollero L, Wołoszczuk A (2015) Innovative Solutions for Inclusion of Totally Blind People. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 401–434
Demiris G, Hensel BK (2008) Technologies for an aging society: a systematic review of “smart home” applications. Yearb Med Inform 3:33–40
Demirkan H, Olguntürk N (2014) A priority-based ‘design for all’approach to guide home designers for independent living. Archit Sci Rev 57(2):90–104
de Oliveira GAA, de Bettio RW, Freire AP (2016) Accessibility of the smart home for users with visual disabilities: an evaluation of open source mobile applications for home automation. In: Proceedings of the 15th Brazilian symposium on human factors in computing systems, pp 1–10
Dohr A, Modre-Osprian R, Drobics M, Hayn D, Schreier G (2010) The internet of things for ambient assisted living. In: Proceedings of the Seventh international conference on information technology: New generations (ITNG), 2010, pp 804–809
Domingo MC (2012) An overview of the internet of things for people with disabilities. J Netw Comput Appl 35(2):584–596
Emiliani PL, Stephanidis C (2005) Universal access to ambient intelligence environments: opportunities and challenges for people with disabilities. IBM Syst J 44(3):605–619
Ericsson KA, Simon HA (1998) How to study thinking in everyday life: Contrasting think-aloud protocols with descriptions and explanations of thinking. Mind Cult Act 5(3):178–186
Gallagher B, Jackson J (2012) Ageing and the impact of vision loss on independent living and mobility. Optometry in Practice 13(2):45–54
Gubbi J, Buyya R, Marusic S, Palaniswami M (2013) Internet of things (iot): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Futur Gener Comput Syst 29(7):1645–1660
Gulliksen J, Harker S (2004) The software accessibility of human-computer interfaces—iso technical specification 16071. Univ Access Inf Soc 3(1):6–16
Hanson VL (2009) Age and web access: the next generation. In: Proceedings of the 2009 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibililty (W4A), ACM, pp 7–15
HiveMQ eMb Mqtt 101 – how to get started with the lightweight iot protocol. http://www.hivemq.com/blog/how-to-get-started-with-mqtt (2015). Accessed: 2021-06
Hudec M, Smutny Z (2017) Rudo: A home ambient intelligence system for blind people. Sensors 17:1926
Iakovidis DK, Diamantis D, Dimas G, Ntakolia C, Spyrou E (2020) Digital enhancement of cultural experience and accessibility for the visually impaired. In: Technological trends in improved mobility of the visually impaired, Springer, pp 237–271
Islam MM, Sadi MS, Zamli KZ, Ahmed MM (2019) Developing walking assistants for visually impaired people: a review. IEEE Sensors J 19(8):2814–2828
Kartakis S, Stephanidis C (2010) A design-and-play approach to accessible user interface development in ambient intelligence environments. Comput Ind 61(4):318–328
Lanigan PE, Paulos AM, Williams AW, Rossi D, Narasimhan P (2006) Trinetra: Assistive technologies for grocery shopping for the blind. In: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE international symposium on wearable computers, pp 147–148
Leporini B, Buzzi M (2018) Home automation for an independent living: Investigating the needs of visually impaired people. In: Proceedings of the internet of accessible things, W4A ’18. ACM, New York, pp 15:1–15:9
Leporini B, Buzzi MC, Buzzi M (2012) Interacting with mobile devices via voiceover: usability and accessibility issues. In: Proceedings of the 24th Australian computer-human interaction conference, ACM, pp 339–348
Lopes NV, Pinto F, Furtado P, Silva J (2014) Iot architecture proposal for disabled people. In: 2014 IEEE 10Th international conference on wireless and mobile computing, networking and communications (wimob), IEEE, pp 152–158
Mahida P, Shahrestani S, Cheung H (2020) Deep learning-based positioning of visually impaired people in indoor environments. Sensors 20(21):6238
Manjari K, Verma M, Singal G (2020) A survey on assistive technology for visually impaired. Internet of Things 11:100188
Mittal VO, Yanco HA, Aronis J, Simpson RC (1998) Assistive technology and artificial intelligence: applications in robotics, user interfaces and natural language processing. 1458 Springer Science & Business Media
Oliveira Otavio de Faria FAPBRW (2021) Interactive smart home technologies for users with visual disabilities: a systematic mapping of the literatures. International Journal of Computers and Applications (in printing)(1)
Oliveira JD, Couto JC, Paixão-Cortes VSM, Bordini RH (2021) Improving the design of ambient intelligence systems: Guidelines based on a systematic review. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, pp 1–9
Park E, Kim S, Kim Y, Kwon SJ (2017) Smart home services as the next mainstream of the ict industry: determinants of the adoption of smart home services. Universal Access in the Information Society online first, pp 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-017-0533-0
Plos O, Buisine S (2006) Universal design for mobile phones: a case study. In: CHI’06 Extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems, ACM, pp 1229–1234
Pradhan A, Mehta K, Findlater L (2018) Accessibility came by accident: use of voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants by people with disabilities. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, ACM, pp 459
Queirós A, Silva A, Alvarelhão J, Rocha NP, Teixeira A (2015) Usability, accessibility and ambient-assisted living: a systematic literature review. Univ Access Inf Soc 14(1):57–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-013-0328-x
Rahman MW, Islam R, Hasan MM, Mia S, Rahman MM (2020) Iot based smart assistant for blind person and smart home using the bengali language. SN Comput Sci 1(5):1–13
Ramlee R, Tang D, Ismail M (2012) Smart home system for disabled people via wireless bluetooth. In: 2012 international conference on System engineering and technology (ICSET), IEEE, pp 1–4
Robles RJ (2010) Kim, T.h.: applications, systems and methods in smart home technology: a review. Int J Adv Sci Technol 15:37–48
Roentgen UR, Gelderblom GJ, Soede M, de Witte LP (2008) Inventory of electronic mobility aids for persons with visual impairments: a literature review. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 102(11):702
Serra LC, Carvalho LP, Ferreira LP, Vaz JBS, Freire AP (2015) Accessibility evaluation of e-government mobile applications in brazil. In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on software development and technologies for enhancing accessibility and fighting info-exclusion (DSAI 2015), vol 67, Elsevier, pp 348–357
Siddesh G, Srinivasa K, Kaushik S, Varun S, Subramanyam V, Patil VM (2020) Internet of things (iot) solution for increasing the quality of life of physically challenged people. In: Securing the internet of things: concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications, IGI global, pp 999–1011
Siebra C, Gouveia T, Macedo J, Correia W, Penha M, Anjos M, Florentin F, Silva FQ, Santos AL (2016) Observation based analysis on the use of mobile applications for visually impaired users. In: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services adjunct, ACM, pp 807–814
Siebra CA, Gouveia TB, Correia W, Penha M, Anjos M, Florentin F, Silva FQ, Santos AL, et al. (2015) Usability for accessibility: a consolidation of requirements for mobile applications. In: Proceedings of the 17th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers & accessibility, ACM, pp 321–322
Stoyanova M, Nikoloudakis Y, Panagiotakis S, Pallis E, Markakis EK (2020) A survey on the internet of things (iot) forensics: challenges, approaches, and open issues. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 22(2):1191–1221
Talukdar PS, Hazarika B, Sharma J, Matam R (2020) An iot based smart assistive device for the visually impaired. In: 2020 IEEE Region 10 symposium (TENSYMP), IEEE, pp 291–294
Tayyaba S, Khan SA, Ashraf MW, Balas VE (2020) Home automation using iot. In: Recent trends and advances in artificial intelligence and internet of things, Springer, pp 343–388
W3C: Accessibility. http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility (2016). Accessed: 2021-06
WHO WHO (2011) World report on disability. 2011 Edn World Health Organization
Wortmann F, Flüchter K, et al. (2015) Internet of things. Business & Information Systems Engineering 57(3):221–224
Xia F, Yang LT, Wang L, Vinel A (2012) Internet of things. Int J Commun Syst 25(9):1101
Zanella A, Bui N, Castellani A, Vangelista L, Zorzi M (2014) Internet of things for smart cities. IEEE Internet of Things Journal 1(1):22–32
Acknowledgements
We thank all the participants who participated in this study for their valuable contribution. We also thank CNPq, FAPEMIG, CAPES and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (proc. 2020/05187-5) for funding this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
de Oliveira, G., Oliveira, O.d.F., de Abreu, S. et al. Opportunities and accessibility challenges for open-source general-purpose home automation mobile applications for visually disabled users. Multimed Tools Appl 81, 10695–10722 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12074-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12074-0