Investigation of Accessibility Issues for Visually Impaired People When Using Washing Machines

Abstract

In the era of numerous consumer products with advanced technologies, there are unexpectedly large number of population being discriminated – although unintentional – from benefits of such products, namely people with disabilities. To prevent such discrimination, many countries and organization have published design guidelines for manufactures to accommodate such population by their products. Despite of such effort, such documents focus on people with physical accessibility issues like people on wheelchair, but not on people with informational accessibility issues like people with visual impairments. In this study, 12 visually impaired people were recruited for survey and interview to investigate their frustration and needs on using consumer products in terms of accessibility. This study specified the consumer product as washing machine, since it is reported as one of the most difficult consumer products to use for visually impaired people by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in Korea. Moreover, their frustration and needs were structuralized by applying task analysis technique to specify them. This study is expected to contribute to manufacturers to comprehend the accessibility issues of visually impaired people when using washing machine and may also propose that the task analysis technique, especially therbligs, may be utilized as an accessibility evaluation tool.