Home Automation for an Independent Living: Investigating the Needs of Visually Impaired People
Barbara Leporini, Marina Buzzi · 2018 · Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018) · doi:10.1145/3192714.3192823
Summary
This paper investigates the habits, expectations, and unmet needs of visually impaired people regarding home automation and remote control systems through an online survey of 42 participants (32 totally blind, 10 low vision; ages 18-70+; 64.3% male) and face-to-face interviews with 8 totally blind participants conducted in Italy. The study was motivated by a gap between the growing availability of smart home technologies and a lack of understanding about whether these systems are actually accessible and useful to blind users. While the Internet of Things and smart home devices promise greater independence, the authors note that many commercial systems have inaccessible interfaces — for example, the web interface of Fibaro, a popular remote control system, fails to properly deliver information to screen readers. The survey investigated three areas: tools currently used for home autonomy, expectations for remote control and automation systems, and design suggestions for accessible interfaces. At the time of the study, home virtual assistants (Alexa, Google Home) were not yet available in Italy, so participants could not evaluate them. The interviews lasted approximately 2 hours and were conducted at the local Association for the Blind, covering both commercial tool usage and expectations for automated control of lighting, shutters, heating, and other systems.
Key findings
More than half (56%) of participants already used some kind of tool for home tasks, primarily for lighting and kitchen activities. The most desired automated systems were: heating/thermostat (95%), lights (81%), water/gas valves (64%), air conditioning (40%), electrical system (40%), shutters (36%), and presence sensors (36%). An unexpected finding was blind users’ strong interest in controlling lighting (81%) — motivated by two scenarios: lights accidentally left on for long periods when living alone, and wanting to independently manage lighting for inclusion when living with sighted family members. For the user interface, smartphones were slightly preferred over computers, but 52% wanted both modalities available. The preferred information display was a list of lit lights/open shutters with toggle controls (20 users), followed by a list of rooms with at least one device on (16 users). Forty out of 42 users agreed on having a single button to turn off all lights or close all shutters. Users expressed significant frustration with the proliferation of separate apps for different devices, each with its own interface to learn — they strongly preferred a single integrated application that could control all home devices. Kitchen support was highly desired (12 users), including accessible oven controls, food processor management via voice, and fridge inventory tracking. Clothing management was another unexpected need (4 users), including colour matching and wardrobe organisation. Users were divided between dedicated assistive devices (more usable for specific tasks) and smartphone apps (more versatile but requiring more steps). A critical concern was minimum accessibility when Wi-Fi fails — blind users worried about being unable to perform basic tasks like turning on lights when the network is down and device panels are inaccessible.
Relevance
This paper provides essential user requirements data for the rapidly growing smart home and IoT industry. The six design recommendations are immediately actionable for developers: (a) create one unified interface for all home services rather than separate apps per device; (b) offer multiple accessibility levels for each service, from simple audible feedback devices in each room to full smartphone app control; (c) design customisable scenarios (e.g., "away from home" alerts about lights and appliances still on); (d) ensure minimum accessibility for basic functions even when wireless is down; (e) design interfaces that are not just accessible but usable, with efficient arrangement of functionalities; and (f) support management of daily living tasks beyond device control (clothing, kitchen, object labelling). The finding that no participant had a home automation system despite many using individual smart devices suggests that the concept of "home automation" is perceived as complex and complete rather than modular and incremental — an important framing issue for the industry. For accessibility practitioners, the study demonstrates that smart home accessibility extends far beyond screen reader compatibility to encompass the entire ecosystem of devices, apps, scenarios, and fallback mechanisms that blind users must navigate to achieve genuine independence.
Tags: smart home · blind · visual impairment · Internet of Things · independent living · home automation · screen readers · voice assistant · user research · Italy