Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 15, numbers 1 and 2, 2022 // View article
Authors:
Takashi Kato
Akihisa Shitara
Nobuko Kato
Yuhki Shiraishi
Keywords: Deaf; hard of hearing; hearing impaired; sign lan- guage; accessibility.
Abstract:
Most voice-based conversational natural user interfaces (NUIs), such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, rely on speech input and output, posing an accessibility barrier for the deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). For example, DHH users may not be aware of notifications from the system, may not receive response information, and the system may have difficulty recognizing their wake-words. In designing a conversational NUI for DHH users, we consider that simply replacing speech information with sign language information does not suffice to create an accessible, comfortable user experience. In this study, we conducted an experiment with 12 DHH users to determine whether luminous notifications and text display methods showing sign language in place of the standard text output were effective, as well as whether gazing was effective as a wake-up method. The second experiment was conducted with 24 DHH users to identify better wake-up and feedback presentation methods. We propose conversational NUI guidelines for DHH users based on the results of these experiments. We examined accessibility options for DHH users at each step of the conversation with the voice user interface (VUI), and expect this work to serve as a basis for future conversational NUI design.
Pages: 65 to 84
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2022. Used with permission.
Publication date: June 30, 2022
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2628