Comparative user study reveals distinct accessibility benefits and privacy concerns in visually impaired versus sighted adults, suggesting needs for tailored speech interfaces.
Smart speakers may support independent living among individuals with visual disabilities, yet evidence on everyday use remains limited. This study examined user experience among 79 participants (41 visually impaired, 38 sighted) over 7 days of naturalistic in-home Amazon Echo use. Interviews, analyzed through content analysis, yielded five themes: accessibility, effectiveness, enjoyment, efficiency, and privacy. Participants with visual disabilities valued voice-based autonomy and emotional engagement, describing Alexa as an “e-friend,” but encountered speech recognition errors. Sighted participants questioned information accuracy relative to generative AI systems and reported setup difficulties, with limited emotional engagement. Privacy concerns were more pronounced among participants with visual disabilities. Findings indicate that smart speaker design should balance these five dimensions, with implications for speech recognition robustness, onboarding, and conversational personalization.
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Ogunmwonyi et al. (2026) studied this question.
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