“Accessibility Came by Accident”: Use of Voice-Controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants by People with Disabilities

From an accessibility perspective, voice-controlled, home-based intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have the potential to greatly expand speech interaction beyond dictation and screen reader output. To examine the accessibility of off-the-shelf IPAs (e.g., Amazon Echo) and to understand how users with disabilities are making use of these devices, we conducted two exploratory studies. The first, broader study is a content analysis of 346 Amazon Echo reviews that include users with disabilities, while the second study more specifically focuses on users with visual impairments, through interviews with 16 current users of home-based IPAs. Findings show that, although some accessibility challenges exist, users with a range of disabilities are using the Amazon Echo, including for unexpected cases such as speech therapy and support for caregivers. Richer voice-based applications and solutions to support discoverability would be particularly useful to users with visual impairments. These findings should inform future work on accessible voice-based IPAs.