Aging in place technologies are designed to extend independence and autonomy in older adults, promoting quality of life and peace of mind. Prior work has described how adoption and continued use of these technologies are low when they are perceived as rein- forcing aging stigma or reminding older adults of negative aspects of aging. Building on past research, we investigate older adults’ perceptions of four different kinds of aging in place technologies. Based on in-depth interviews with 18 older adults using a set of scenarios, we describe how different design characteristics con- tribute to perceived aging stigma. Additionally, we draw on Duner & Nordström’s classification of coping strategies to discuss how specific kinds of technology can best support older adults during different stages of the aging process.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517586
Innovations in HCI research of health-related pervasive and ubiquitous technologies can potentially improve older adults’ access to healthcare resources and support long-term independence in the home. Despite efforts to include their voices in technology research and design, many older adults have yet to actualize these health benefits, with barriers of access and proficiency actually widening the gap of health inequities. We reviewed 174 HCI publications through a systematic review to examine who is engaged in the design of health technologies for older adults, methods used to engage them, and how different types of participation might impact design directions. Findings highlight that thus far, many identity dimensions have not been explored in HCI aging research. We identify research gaps and implications to promote expanding research engagement with these dimensions as a way to support the design of health technologies that see better adoption among marginalized populations.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517621
Makeup and cosmetics offer the potential for self-expression and the reshaping of social roles for visually impaired people. However, there exist barriers to conducting a beauty regime because of the reliance on visual information and color variances in makeup. We present a content analysis of 145 YouTube videos to demonstrate visually impaired individuals' unique practices before, during, and after doing makeup. Based on the makeup practices, we then conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 visually impaired people to discuss their perceptions of and challenges with the makeup process in more depth. Overall, through our findings and discussion, we present novel perceptions of makeup from visually impaired individuals (e.g., broader representations of blindness and beauty). The existing challenges provide opportunities for future research to address learning barriers, insufficient feedback, and physical and environmental barriers, making the experience of doing makeup more accessible to people with visual impairments.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517490
Research has revealed benefits and interest among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) adults in reading-assistance tools powered by Automatic Text Simplification (ATS), a technology whose development benefits from evaluations by specific user groups. While prior work has provided guidance for evaluating text complexity among DHH adults, researchers lack guidance for evaluating the fluency of automatically simplified texts, which may contain errors from the simplification process. Thus, we conduct methodological research on the effectiveness of metrics (including reading speed; comprehension questions; and subjective judgements of understandability, readability, grammaticality, and system performance) for evaluating texts controlled to be at different levels of fluency, when measured among DHH participants at different literacy levels. Reading speed and grammaticality judgements effectively distinguished fluency levels among participants across literacy levels. Readability and understandability judgements, however, only worked among participants with higher literacy. Our findings provide methodological guidance for designing ATS evaluations with DHH participants.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517566
With about 230 million packages delivered per day in 2020, fetching packages has become a routine for many city dwellers in China. When fetching packages, people usually need to go to collection sites of their apartment complexes or a KuaiDiGui, an increasingly popular type of self-service package pickup machine. However, little is known whether such processes are accessible to blind and low vision (BLV) city dwellers. We interviewed BLV people (N=20) living in a large metropolitan area in China to understand their practices and challenges of fetching packages. Our findings show that participants encountered difficulties in finding the collection site and localizing and recognizing their packages. When fetching packages from KuaiDiGuis, they had difficulty in identifying the correct KuaiDiGui, interacting with its touch screen, navigating the complex on-screen workflow, and opening the target compartment. We discuss design considerations to make the package fetching process more accessible to the BLV community.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3502063