Simple Smart Homes Web Interfaces for Blind People

Marina Buzzi

, Barbara Leporini

and Clara Meattini

Institute of Informatics and Telematics, IIT-CNR, via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy

Institute of Information Science and Technologies, ISTI-CNR, via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy

Keywords: Home Automation, Usability, Accessibility, Visually Impaired, Web Interfaces, Screen Reader.

Abstract: Last-decade great advances in technology have contributed to make home smarter and more comfortable,

especially for people with disabilities. A lot of low cost solutions are available on the market, which can be

controlled remotely by a Home Automation System (HAS). Unfortunately, the user interfaces are usually

designed to be visually oriented which can exclude some user categories, like those who are blind. This

paper focuses on the design of usable Web user interfaces for Home Automation Systems, with a special

attention to the functions as well as the interface arrangement in order to enhance the interaction via screen

reader. The proposed indications could inspire other designers to make the user experience more satisfying

and effective for people who interact via screen reader.

1 INTRODUCTION

Visually-impaired people may experience obstacles

and issues when interacting with software and

hardware components. Speech technology, screen

reading software and multimodal user interfaces

have been proposed to overcome those access

barriers (Stephanidis, 2009). However, the

interaction is not always particularly easy for a

person who is blind. The user interfaces (UIs) should

be designed not only following accessible principles,

but importantly offering a usable experience.

Several accessibility and usability guidelines have

been proposed in the literature in order to enhance

the interaction with UIs, including the Web (Boldú,

et al. 2017). Nevertheless, accessibility issues still

exist when interacting via assistive technology

(Power et al., 2012). Consequently, research focuses

on methodologies and tools for improving

accessibility of user interfaces and related services.

Despite an increasing focus on the smart home

environments within the human–computer

interaction (HCI) field, there is still a lack of studies

in the context for people with special needs. A

Home Automation System (HAS) would enable

blind people to perform everyday activities

autonomously, which might be impossible or very

difficult for them. For instance, checking or setting

the h temperature could not be effectively possible

for people who are blind due to the inaccessibility of

the thermostat interface. Exploiting a remote control

system based on a (Web) app, blind persons can

perform checking/setting tasks autonomously. In

order to enable blind users to fully and satisfactorily

control their home environment, the (Web or

mobile) HAS interfaces must be effectively

accessible and usable via screen reader.

This study investigates how to design HAS Web

interfaces to effectively support the screen reading

users to handle their everyday home activities.

Starting from users’ preferences and requirements

collected in (Leporini and Buzzi, 2018), and from

the main accessibility and usability issues observed

in (Buzzi et al., 2017), this work proposes a

prototype of potential HAS Web Interfaces aimed at

enhancing the interaction usability via screen reader.

Although many studies investigated how to design

an effective and usable user interface (Almeida et

al., 2018; Carvalho et al., 2016; Velasco et al.,

2008), Home Automation Systems have not been

investigated in terms of UIs. Our research is aimed

at overcoming this gap.

The main contribution of this work is to propose

a methodology for a HAS interface in terms of (1)

features and functions to include, and (2)

arrangement and organization of the components in

the interfaces for a suitable and satisfactorily

interaction for screen reader users.

The paper is organized in six sections. Section 2

introduces the related work and section 3

Buzzi, M., Leporini, B. and Meattini, C.

Simple Smart Homes Web Interfaces for Blind People.

DOI: 10.5220/0006935602230230

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2018), pages 223-230

ISBN: 978-989-758-324-7

223

summarises the method leading the study. Section 4

describes the study, including the requirements, the

features of the prototypal user interface, and the

examples illustrating the proposed solutions. A short

discussion highlighting possible research direction is

reported in section 5. Conclusions and future work

end the paper.

2 RELATED WORK

Internet empowers home automation systems

making them simpler and smarter, accessible

anytime, anywhere. Smart Houses are a great

valuable opportunity for people with disability to

achieve independence, they encompass the mere

usability and embrace the personal care and safety

(Leporini at al., 2018). An accurate review of smart

homes and for home health monitoring technologies

show that currently the technology-readiness is still

low and a strong evidence on their effectiveness as

prevention tool for assisting old persons is still

missing (Liu et al., 2016).

Simple routinely operations involving lights,

shutters and doors are very important for people

with disability. B-Live is an example of a system

designed for the motor impaired (tetraplegic,

paraplegic and wheelchair users) and elderly (Santos

et al., 2007).

Nowadays natural interaction that exploits voice

and tact senses is expanding. T Vocal interaction to

control home automation has been early investigated

with telephone interface (Sandweg et al., 2000). The

introduction of sounds in home automation may

improve user experience by delivering information

quickly (Liu et al., 2016).

The integration of voice engine technology is a

promising research field, which needs to be carefully

evaluated in actual contexts. It shows great potential

as voice commands would be optimal for blind

people. Vocal assistants such as Google or Alexa by

Amazon, are recently emerging. However, in case of

the elderly person a vocal interaction encourages a

lazy lifestyle, that might provoke a rapid physical

and cognitive degradation (Portet et al., 2013). Thus

designing for elderly it is fundamental to promote

healthy way of life particularly for the ageing

population in Europe.

Various solutions have been proposed to

overcome difficulties for blind people (Brady et al.

2013). In the last decade, low-cost built-in modular

systems emerged such as Fibaro (www.fibaro.com)

or easy-to-build Arduino solutions (www.arduino.cc,

an open-source project). These systems enable

control via a computer, smartphone or tablet using

the Internet network infrastructure.

Alternatively sensors and actuators embedded in

everyday objects, smart home appliances and

furniture, RFID systems are also used. Smart homes

empower people with disabilities when usable

interfaces are offered, facilitating social activities

and monitoring health conditions (Brady et al.,

2013). Caregivers can be alerted when anomalies are

detected. A multi-modal gestural and vocal interface

system for controlling distributed smart homes

appliances, has been proposed by (Jeet et al., 2015)

to enable hands-free operation to people with motor

disability. Blind people can also exploit these

interactions.

3 METHOD

Starting from the users’ requirements and

preferences, and the accessibility issues and design

suggestions investigated in the previous works

(Buzzi and Leporini, 2017; Leporini and Buzzi,

2018), we identified some crucial needs and

consequently features to include in the HAS design,

and a simple template for enabling a usable

interaction via screen reader. For instance, rather

than providing a single and all comprehensive

interface overview for showing the lighting on/off,

different simplified views are made available for a

more compact rendering better navigable via screen

reader and keyboard as well.

Briefly, our methodology can be summarized in

the following procedure:

1. Analysis of the users’ requirements as well

as main accessibility and usability issues

experienced via screen reader interacting

with a popular commercial system for Home

Automation (Fibaro);

2. Identification of the main features as well as

functions to include in the design of user

interface of a HAS;

3. Selection of the components to include in

the user interfaces especially in terms of

arrangement and organization according to

the activities related to a smart home.

For the last step, the main accessibility and

usability guidelines have been considered: the W3C

WCAG and WAI-ARIA (W3C, 2014), specific

usability design suggestions proposed in (Buzzi et

al., 2017), and (Leporini et al., 2018).

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During the entire design-cycle two totally blind

users have been involved in various pilot tests to

evaluate the interface prototype. The Internet

Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Browsers, and the

screen reader Jaws for Windows

(http://www.freedomscientific.com/) have been used

to test the Web interfaces.

4 THE WEB INTERFACE

4.1 Requirements

In a survey involving 42 visually impaired people -

32 of them totally blind - (Leporini and Buzzi,

2018), the users expressed clear preferences for:

(1) handling the status of the devices such as

lighting system in an effective and simple way

(checking and turning). This interest was expressed

by the 81% of the participants living alone or in

specific situations. So we included this functionality

in our system.

(2) Chance to manage home devices such as

thermostat, washing machines, electric system,

garden and any type of activity that can be

controlled remotely.

Based on these preferences, the main functionalities

as well as components to be included in the user

interface have been identified. Customization,

simple tasks and different devices/status views are

important features driving the User Interface design.

The usability issues encountered when

navigating the Fibaro Web interfaces via screen

reader (Buzzi et al. 2017) derive from the lack of

(I) Interface partitioning in logical sections, to

allow the user in better orientating among the

page components;

(II) Meaningful context-independent labels of

links and buttons (e.g. “lamp 1 on”, rather

than just “on”). This is especially useful to

easily and clearly understand the interactive

items and corresponding tasks carried out;

(III) Compact contents and simple interaction to

perform common tasks like reading elements

(e.g., the device status) or performing simple

actions (e.g., change status).

4.2 Features and Functions

The usability definition by ISO 9241 (www.iso.org/)

takes into account the specified users when

interacting with a system in a context of use to reach

specified goals. In our case, the goals are: to be able

to easily and satisfactorily check the status of the

devices as well as to set/perform specific actions

such as turning lights on/off or activating predefined

scenarios.

Accordingly, the main tasks and objectives to

meet in the proposed interfaces are identified in:

(1) Checking which devices/sensors are on/off;

for this activity the interface should provide quick

functions and immediate control of the most used

devices.

(2) Turning on/off the devices/sensors; as in the

previous case, the user should be able to carry out

specific tasks through a quick and easy interaction.

The user should perform quickly very common

activities, such as turning all lights.

(3) Getting an overview of information about the

home/room/device status. The user interface should

provide useful views and links to quickly read the

status and to get a fast overview of the HAS. A

summary of the status for the home and for each

single room could be useful functionalities provided

by the interface.

With this in mind the following main characteristics

and functionalities have been included in the UIs

design:

1. Menus, regions and heading levels. Menus

and regions have been applied to deliver the

information via a logical partitioning of the

contents. Regions and heading levels have been

introduced for structuring the interface content.

2. Home summary and rooms details. The user

interface offers a quick summary of the home

status (i.e., how many lights are on, which

devices are active, etc.); besides, the user has

the opportunity to visualize the details of a

single room.

3. Global search and “ready-functions” for

checking devices status. The user can perform

any search about the devices status, but to

simplify the interaction for frequent actions, the

user interface provides “ready functions” to

carry out specified tasks (e.g. which lights are

still on).

Therefore the prototype includes the following

user interfaces:

• Map view for the status of the home in

summary or by rooms details

• Views by Devices status

• Items and quick actions for specific tasks

like ‘turn on/off specific devices’ or ‘check

the open elements’.

Simple Smart Homes Web Interfaces for Blind People

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In the following we illustrate these features showing

how the proposed solutions applied to develop the

Web user interfaces can simplify the interaction via

screen reader.

4.3 Web User Interfaces

In this section some UIs are presented to introduce

our Web prototype. The features have been arranged

into different pages that the user can quickly select

by a simple click on the tab panel on the top of the

interface. The navigation menu is composed of 4

items: Home, Devices, Scenarios, and Settings. In

the following we describe the ‘Home’ and ‘Devices’

Interfaces.

4.3.1 Map View

Map views are usually used to show and interact

with the home structure in a friendly graphical way.

Frequently they are not so accessible via screen

reader. In our study we intended to use a map view

in order to consider how to make it both accessible

and usable for screen reading users. Thus, let us to

act on the map of a home with few rooms, to apply

accessibility design (See Figure 1).

Figure 1: Home Automation Web Interface (map view):

Home status.

When designing the user interface, we intended

to: (1) reproduce a graphical attractive map for

sighted people, (2) create a room list clearly

detectable by the screen reader, and (3) show a

summary of the home status (global overview) or

room by room (details).

When the user clicks on the link “Home” from

the “menu”, the map of the home is automatically

shown (See Figure 1). The user can now get a

summary of the current home situation with the

status for the most important devices. By clicking on

a room, the summary for that room is instead

displayed. In Figure 2 the kitchen room has been

selected by the user.

In Table 1 and 2 the content announced by Jaws

when accessing respectively the home map and the

kitchen are reported. The italic indicates the content

announced about user interface element typology

(e.g., link, button, heading level, etc.).

By navigating the map via Tab key, the screen

reader informs the user about typology for each

element. For example, Jaws reads "graphic living

room map image", so the user becomes aware is

navigating a map. The user can interact with that

element to get more details on it. By navigating via

arrow keys, the home map is detected by the screen

reader as a list of elements, i.e. the names of the

rooms. Each room is announced in a single line with

its name followed by the ‘clickable’ attribute. The

user can quickly go along the list and select one

room by just pressing the space bar key (i.e. to click

on that item).

Table 1: Text announced by Jaws: the home status.

My home: Status

Menu navigation region

list of 4 items

Link Home

Link Devices

Link Scenarios

Link Settings

list end

Menu navigation region end

main region

Home Map clickable

Double bedroom clickable

Kitchen clickable

Living room clickable

Bedroom clickable

Bathroom clickable

Terrace clickable

Heading level 2 Summary

list of 9 items

Internal Temperature: 16.5°

External Temperature: 18°

Heating System: OFF, away 15°

Lights ON: 10

Windows Open: 2

Dishwasher: ON

Oven: ON

Fridge: ON

Television: ON

list end

main region end

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For the general overview, we included an

interface enhancement with a summary of the home

status in the home page, such as the internal and

external temperature, heating system status, number

of the total lights on, number of the opened shutters,

status of the washing and Dishwasher machines.

This summary should be configurable according to

user preferences. By clicking on a room (for instance

the kitchen) you can see the turned on devices for

that room: the detailed list is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Home Automation Web interface (map view):

Kitchen status.

Table 2: Text announced by Jaws: the kitchen status.

My home: Devices

…

Heading level 2 Kitchen

Device:

Chandelier lights: ON

Radiator: OFF

Cookers: OFF

Taps: Close

Fridge: ON

Oven: ON (230°, timer set to 15 minutes),

Dishwasher: ON (ends in 40 min)

Windows: Close

main region end

4.3.2 Device Status

The user could be interested to get the status of all

devices belonging to a same category (e.g., shutters),

or getting an overview about all the devices in a

specific same status (e.g., lights turned on). To this

end, the user interface should allow to perform a

search by “category” or “status”. Usually, like the

system described in (Buzzi et al., 2017) this

information is shown all together in the same user

interface so that looking at a glance the user can get

a lot of information. Unfortunately this approach is

not appropriate for VIP because of too many links,

buttons and contents. There is not an overview of

the contents and sequential navigation requires a lot

of effort via arrow and Tab keys. More flexibility

interfaces aid VI users in make interaction faster and

satisfying. Thus, from the menu, the link “Devices”

gives the opportunity to perform various types of

searches.

To check windows if it rains a blind person

usually needs to move into all the rooms and “touch

by hand” window by window to check if it is open.

Otherwise, if a Home Automation system provides a

support to check all the open windows, the user can

go directly only towards those to be closed. Thus the

user interface should provide a very quick way to

carry out this frequent daily activity.

In this perspective, our prototype has been

designed to offer this opportunity: (1) performing a

quick search according to the different parameters

(typology, status and room), and (2) showing the

results so that the user can check in a list the results

and quickly change their status in one click.

Figure 3 shows the results related to the search

performed according to “Windows” devices, “On”

status, and “all rooms”. Table 3 reports how the

screen reader Jaws reads the user interface and the

results. All devices related to search settings are

listed each by line. The space bar can be used to

change the status (when possible).

Figure 3: Home Automation Web interface: Search by

devices.

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227

Table 3: Content announced by Jaws: search by devices.

My home: Devices

...

Heading level 2 Search by

Check the current situation of your home

Windows Listbox item selected

Open Listbox item selected

Show all rooms Listbox item selected

Search Button

Heading level 2 Results:

Bedroom:Window, Open

Double bedroom:Window, Open

Heading level 2 Quick search

Lights on Button

Home appliances on Button

Open windows Button

Show active / open devices in each room Button

...

The user interface also offers ready buttons to

perform some more common queries, in order to get

very quickly a list of lights on, open shutters and

windows, and so on. Specifically, the available

functionalities we proposed for a “quick search” are:

“Lights on”, “Home appliances on”, “Open

windows”, and the opportunity to “Show active/open

devices in each room”. These functionalities are

aimed at simplifying some checks avoiding to set up

the queries for very common tasks each time.

For example, by clicking on the “Lights on”

button, a list of the lights turned on is shown after

the button it-self (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Quick Search: results shown when pressing the

“Lights on” button.

The user can immediately read it just via the

arrow keys. To turn off a light it is enough pressing

the space bar on the corresponding item. Table 4

reports the text announced by Jaws when pressing

the “lights on” button.

Table 4: Content announced by Jaws when pressing the

“Lights on” button.

My home: Devices

...

Heading level 2 Quick search

Lights on Button

Lights on:

list of 10 items

Kitchen:Chandelier, ON

Living rooom:Chandelier, ON

Living room:Lamp 1, ON

Living room:Lamp 2, ON

Bathroom:Chandelier, ON

Bedroom:Chandelier, ON

Bedroom:Lamp 1, ON

Double bedroom:Chandelier, ON

Terrace:Light 1, ON

Terrace:Light 2, ON

list end

Home appliances on Button

Open windows Button

Show active / open devices in each room Button

main region end

4.3.3 Partitioning and Info

In our prototype we introduced the page content

partitioning and additional information to provide to

the screen reader. For this purpose, in the design we

specifically used:

• The WAI-Aria regions for partitioning the Web

content within the page. This allows the user to

get an overview of the page via a specified

command (Ctrl+JawsKey+R). An example is

reported in Figure 5: four regions have been

used for structuring the “Devices search” page.

This has been designed by using the ‘region

role’ with the title attribute: <div role=”region”

title=”results”>.

• The WAI-Aria live regions to inform the screen

reader (and so the user) when a dynamic region

updates. In this way as soon as the content

changes the screen reader automatically reads it.

In this way the user does not have to explore the

page to detect if something has changed. In our

prototype we used the live regions both in the

‘home status’ and ‘devices’ pages: in the first

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case the live region has been used for the

‘summary’ area; in the second one, for the

results content. An example of the code is <div

role= "contentinfo" aria-live="polite" aria-

atomic="true" aria-relevant="additions text">.

• Each page title contains a sort of current path.

For example, the pages have the titles like “My

home: Status”, for the “Home” page; “My

home: Devices”, for the page designed for the

search; “My home: Scenarios”, to select

predefined scenarios. The page title is the first

element read by the screen reader when a new

page is loaded; so it can help the user in

understanding more easily the current page.

This can be designed by simply writing a sort of

path in the <title> tag (we used <title>My

home: Devices</title>, for the ‘Devices page’).

Figure 5: List of the ARIA regions captured by Jaws.

4.4 Pilot Evaluation

In order to understand if our approach can be

appropriate, three visually-impaired skilled users

have been involved to test the proposed Web

interfaces. The users were asked to interact with the

system by assigning them three tasks: (a) check (if

any) what are the devices on in the living room; (b)

Turn off all the lights, and (c) detect what is the

internal temperature. The users accomplished all

tasks in a natural setting, using their desktop to

navigate the prototype, one at time. A think-aloud

protocol was been applied and researchers observed

and recorded any comments. Interesting suggestions

about the interfaces emerged during the pilot, useful

to enhance their usability.

Shortcuts and additional predefined buttons

could further improve the use of the system; the

search by devices and status could be better

enhanced by adding specific links to simplify the

selection. Some commands like “turn off all lights”

should be available near the results of a search in

order to switch off the devices listed. Some

scenarios and opportunity to set them should be

added to the user interface.

5 DISCUSSION

In this work we focus on how to propose and

arrange the interface components to perform easily

and quickly common tasks such as checking and

changing the device status, to have different views

and to simplify the interaction. The user interface

can show the status summary for the entire home,

and a more specific details once a room has been

selected. This enables the user to get a quick home

overview about the device status. Briefly, three main

keys driven our Web interface design:

(1) reducing the irrelevant information; This can

affect positively especially the sequential reading

and interaction via screen reader and keyboards;

(2) showing only the contents related to the

current goal; This enhances the user interaction

especially with the common commands. In addition,

the user can focus on the useful functionalities and

elements related to the context.

(3) simplifying the repeated tasks via specific

functionalities and commands. By providing

predefined tasks can widely improve those activities

which may be carried out frequently.

Through the proposed prototype, our goal was

focused on simplifying the Web interfaces in order

to reduce the contents to show, and at the same time

to avoid elements of no use. The advantages of such

an approach is confirmed by the study (Giraud et al.,

2018): by avoiding redundant and irrelevant

information there are substantial benefit regarding

participants' cognitive load, performance, and

satisfaction.

The short pilot test revealed the feasibility of the

proposed approach, even if further improvements are

needed. However, it is very important to check

usability of prototype via smartphone since it may

be more convenient for the blind when moving

around the home.

6 CONCLUSION

In this work a prototype of Web user interfaces for a

Home Automation System has been proposed to

enhance interaction via screen reader. Smart homes

have the potential to empower the individual

independence, provided that the interaction with the

devices and services are simple for people,

regardless their abilities.

The design of our prototype suggested to have a

simple and interactive interface by (1) reducing the

page content to the current task and (2) arranging the

Simple Smart Homes Web Interfaces for Blind People

229

functions and commands according to the main

goals. The main goals in Home Automation can be

summarized in checking and update the device

status, and providing information in a very simple

manner.

IoT technology offers new opportunities. More

research is needed to investigate new chances and

main challenges for simplifying interaction for

people with disability and building cheap accessible

and inclusive smart homes: the optimal positioning

of intelligent objects in the home, the range of

valuable services for special need users, the

seamlessly combination of smart devices and

personal health systems. As a consequence, the

interfaces are clearly affected by the integrated

system to deliver the services and contents to the

users. Predefined scenarios and configurations can

become two important enabling keys in such a

context.

As future work smart components and Web

interfaces to support context-aware scenarios and

customized settings will be investigated.

In order to enhance usability interaction of smart

homes for all, and to favour the individual autonomy

additional research on smart home accessibility has

to address different areas such as intellectual

disability and learning problems by exploiting

cognitive psychology and social principles, and

investigating new ways for enhancing safety and

security.

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