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Is Siri dispensable? Perhaps most people will say yes, yes or not. However, for those Apple users with physical disabilities, Siri is not only a fun “fresh stuff”, but also plays a very important role in their lives. With Siri, they can do a lot of things that are hard to do – people with eye problems can type and program more easily, while people with autism learn more.

But the functionality of Siri is far from perfect. Related voice assistant developers have not adequately taken into account disabled users during product design, making it difficult for some physically disabled users to take full advantage of Apple products. Technology companies should consider their needs from the development stage, because perhaps they are the ones who need Siri most.

“Siri never gets angry.” Autistic patient C.R. said.

He asked to disclose only the first letter of his name to protect his privacy. His comments reflect a feature of Apple’s voice assistants that people often don’t realize.

“We are fortunate to have Siri,” he added. “Siri is amazing.”

Many people with disabilities think Siri is an important tool. I also talked to patients with various diseases, from blind patients to patients with myotitis and myositis (fatigue). From their feedback, Siri still has many problems, making it impossible to be a perfect Barrier tools, but Apple doesn’t seem to be eager to solve these problems.

At the June Developer Conference, Apple released only a few simple announcements about its iconic voice assistant: Siri now uses a more emulated sound; it can create shortcuts for the Shortcuts App (Annotation: Shortcuts App can Create a multi-step, personalized workflow process that covers Apple native apps, third-party apps, Apple services, and settings to bring a variety of possibilities for streamlining tasks, such as launching a podcast app when you are away from home; users editing You don’t have to say “嘿Siri” before replying to a text message.

In August of this year, Apple announced the enhancement of the privacy protection features of the Siri “Manual Rating” program. The program is designed to improve Siri performance and to schedule live listeners to talk to Siri. Although Apple is taking a little late, it’s better than nothing.

But that’s it. At the Apple product launch in September, Siri was ignored. Supporting Siri for user-friendly accessibility, it is unclear whether Apple is paying due attention to the product.

Chancey Fleet, vice president of the National Federation of the Blind of New York, said: “Apple has been leading the development of built-in accessibility features compared to many other platforms. Status, Apple devices are more powerful and user experience is more enjoyable. However, disabled people are only a minority. As a minority, the services we enjoy are only sub-optimal. Even if these companies have done their best, they can still Do more effort.”

Software developer Mike Ray is a blind person who says he will let Siri dictate and keep himself focused in public. For example, there are some accessibility features that can make visually impairedIt prevents the patient from typing by swiping a finger on the screen and replying to the voice prompt of the broadcast letter, but these functions require the user to concentrate on the operation.

Lei said: “When I go out, I don’t like to pay too much attention on my mobile phone. I prefer to use Siri to send text messages and launch applications, so I can put my phone back in my pocket, not myself. I feel uneasy because of lack of concentration.”

He wants to set the default email or SMS to be easier. If you just need to say something like “Tell Sarah on the train,” then he can focus on the surrounding. Environment instead of cell phone.

But for those who speak differently from the healthy people, many of the voice-activated assistants, including Siri, are not fully functional.

C.R. says he uses Siri to remember things. For C.R., asking some questions will make others look at him differently, but Siri can answer these questions for him. “I can’t figure out the time, I will ask when the holiday is, how many days this month,” CR said. “I tried to ask others, they will laugh, or tell me that I should know these things, and tell me they don’t. Will help me in this kind of thing.”

C.R. says that for autistic people, Siri is a magical tool because “we don’t always know common sense.”

C.R. said that because he always forgets things, such as what he ate at lunch, he hopes that Siri can better play the role of memory aid. Providing Siri with the ability to record this everyday information can benefit other autistic people who often forget important information and Siri can help them write it down.

A review article in 2018 found that there are very few studies on how voice-activated assistants like Siri can achieve accessibility. To assess whether Siri and Google Assistant can be used as accessibility tools, a study in the same year investigated how 18 intellectually impaired people used two assistants to search for information.

The study found that 13 of the subjects preferred to use voice-activated assistants because of typing, because it is faster and easier to type than typing, and can better accomplish tasks such as setting calendar events. These 13 subjects said they like voice assistants very much, andWill choose to use again. Shortly after the study, several people tried or installed similar applications on their phones.

Nevertheless, the two voice-activated assistants in this study pose great challenges for the subjects, even those who like to use them. This software is not very friendly to people with language impairments, or to users who speak less, speak slowly, and often pause.

In my many interviews for this article, this issue has recurred: there are not many voice-activated assistants for groups that speak differently from healthy people, including Siri. In the United States, 7.5 million people are unable to speak orally for various reasons (including Parkinson’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, stuttering, aging, etc.). But the 7.5 million people do not include those whose voices are unique, such as those who speak very slowly or especially fast, and Siri is hard to adapt to these groups.

“Obviously, they were not designed with us in mind.”

In 2017, fatigued writer Jamison Hill wrote an excellent article for Mic, a US news site, describing how his chronic illness has developed and affected The clarity and volume of his voice have led to a significant reduction in the use of Siri.

Now, Hill uses Google Assistant and Siri to do a variety of tasks: Siri can read an online article for him or help him proofread his work, and Google Assistant can help him communicate with others in the family. But he said that since he wrote this article, he has not seen any improvements made by Siri and Google Assistant.

Hill said: “It’s hard to avoid the fact that both are designed to facilitate the lives of healthy, healthy people, not to make life easier for people with disabilities. Obviously, people I didn’t think about us when designing Siri and Google Assistant… I’m still waiting for a helper app that can interact with it without talking.”

Heather Woods, a professor of rhetoric and technical assistant at Kansas State University, also pointed out that Siri can’t adapt to users with different spoken styles or disabilities. Woods said, “Many people can’t use voice-activated devices because Siri can’t understand what they mean. For people with disabilities, including those whose voices or speeches are affected, most of Siri’s voice features don’t work.” p>

Fleet said that when she trains blind or visually impaired people to use Siri, she plays the role of Siri, because talking to the virtual assistant is a skill in itself. She said, “Siri can’t stand it.The user pauses.”

Although users familiar with technology will quickly adapt to the specific requirements of voice-activated assistants like Siri to the user, but in general, for those who have just contacted voice-activated assistants or who have just had a disability, such as Fleet training. For patients, it may be more difficult to adapt to the specific needs of the software. Fleet said: “Emerging technology users will be nervous because of this continuous interference, they will become confused and spend more time.”

Fleet also pointed out that Siri can’t adapt to the ability of many disabled people to exceed the average person. For example, some blind or visually impaired patients become very sensitive to hearing and can achieve faster reading speeds than those with normal vision by listening.

Although Apple’s VoiceOver feature, which allows voice reading of screen content, allows for reading speed, Siri reads aloud to each user at the same slow pace, which is a habit of listening to 500 words per minute. People can be extremely boring.

For example, if a user wants Siri to play this week’s weather forecast, they must listen to Siri at a slower rate than others. According to Fleet, the ideal situation is that users can change this setting by asking Siri to speak slower or faster. But as far as the current situation is concerned, although users can change the gender or accent of Siri, they cannot change the speed at which Siri speaks.

If Apple and other software companies can consider more types of disability in their technology development, this situation can be improved and even avoided. However, according to Fleet, most people with disabilities who test the product’s accessibility features are like her, who use these technology products every day and are proficient in technology.

She said that if Apple really wants to make its products available to a wider audience, it needs to consider new emerging user groups, language barriers, and other non-mainstream users in the product development process. Inside.

Although Apple needs to deal with many of the problems Siri faces, I find that most of the people I talked to are positive about Siri. This finding is supported by existing research that evaluates the feasibility of virtual assistants as a tool for people with disabilities. Another study in 2018 interviewed disabled people about Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa and analyzed them and found that their views on the technology were mostly positive.

Some people use Alexa as a memory aid – people with dementia can ask what the device is today; if you don’t remember how to dial, you can use Alexa to make a call. Some research subjects said that they are very grateful that Alexa can doSome things that were previously done by the caregiver, such as checking information online, checking the weather, or jotting down some things.

One researcher pointed out that he/she does not have to repeatedly ask the nursing staff for time. “Alexa has helped me to relieve some of the stress. It works very well. It can answer the same question all day, and never get angry.” The criticism of Alexa is similar to the criticism I have heard in many interviews: usually related to Alexa’s inability to adapt to people with language impairment.

Siri is a fun and useful tool for millions of Americans, including many Apple users with physical disabilities. They found that with Siri, they were able to use the iPhone and iPad more easily. But Siri also faces major challenges that make it difficult for some physically disabled users to take full advantage of Apple’s products.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment from reporters. If the company doesn’t focus its product development efforts on improving speech recognition software, especially to enhance Siri’s services for people with disabilities, Apple will miss out on a large number of key users who deserve better things than what Apple currently sells.