Accessibility assessments typically focus on determining a binary measurement of task performance success/failure, and often neglect to acknowledge the nuances of those interactions. Although a large population of blind people find smartphone interactions possible, many experiences take a significant toll and can have a lasting negative impact on the individual and their willingness to step out of technological comfort zones. There is a need to assist and support individuals with the adoption and learning process of new tasks to mitigate these negative experiences. We contribute with a human-powered nonvisual task assistant for smartphones to provide pervasive assistance. We argue, in addition to success, one must carefully consider promoting and evaluating factors such as self-efficacy and the belief in one's abilities to control and learn to use technology. In this paper, we show effective assistant positively affects self-efficacy when performing new tasks with smartphones, affects perceptions of accessibility and enables systemic task-based learning.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3449188
The 24th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing