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Abstract | I. Business Opportunity | II. Current Technology | III. Technology Requirements | IV. References AbstractDespite the recent advancements in consumer electronics, there is still a need to improve upon current design trends in order to produce products that are easy to use and accessible to persons with visual impairments. Consumer electronics are increasingly being upgraded into highly sophisticated electronic devices, integrating microprocessors and broadband networks into their design. These complex features will enable users to remotely control home appliances, gather information regarding the status of each device, and enjoy the simplicity of device operation from personally adapted remote control systems. The incorporation of accessible features into consumer electronics will greatly improve the ability of people with visual impairments to fully employ all of the functionality that these devices have to offer. In addition, reducing the functional burden of device operation will enhance ease of use for all populations. [ Top of Page ] Business OpportunityRemote control technology has not yet embraced inclusive design principles, thereby leaving the millions of Americans with visual impairments unable to take full advantage of these devices. As technology has advanced, remote control operation of electronics has become increasingly commonplace. Currently in the United States, there are an estimated four hundred million remote controls, an average of four per household (Mr. Remote Controls, 2003). Remote controls are available for tasks ranging from opening and closing window blinds to programming state-of-the-art stereo systems. There are still many functions yet to be harnessed by remote control interfaces, and many facets of development and deployment that must be addressed before their potential is fully realized. Remote controls have not yet incorporated features to ease the burden of use for people with visual impairments. Unfortunately, neither have consumer electronics. Industry statistics demonstrate the proliferation of consumer electronics in America. The factory value of consumer electronics sold in 2001 was estimated to be over $102 billion, including video, audio, mobile electronics, home information products, blank media, accessories and batteries, and electronic gaming (Dealerscope, 2002). In 2001, approximately 96% of the 119 million homes in the United States had refrigerators and ovens or burners. In addition, 76% had washing machines, 56% of all housing units had dishwashers, and 55% had central air conditioning units (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). These statistics reflect the nature of American homes, where households typically own a multitude of consumer electronics products. As cell phone and computer use become increasingly ubiquitous, remote interaction with electronic devices will continue to grow in popularity. Unless designers make accommodations for persons with visual impairments, 7.7 million Americans with visual impairments will continue to find that they are unable to fully utilize the capabilities of consumer electronics and the remote control systems that operate them (McNeil, 2001). [ Top of Page ] Current TechnologyRemote controls have greatly increased in sophistication in recent years. They are able to operate the myriad of home entertainment equipment that is now available. However, there are still many practical functions that these remotes cannot perform. In fact, the "universality" of universal remotes comes into question as entertainment devices add more features and functions to their standard controls. Some remotes will not operate certain brands, and many do not come equipped with enough buttons to control all of the features of any given device. This leaves many consumers with no choice but to own a number of remote controls, each for a specific device or task. Additionally, consumers are challenged by nonexistent labeling, lack of color contrast on labels, small, unreadable labels, inadequate feedback, and the proliferation of multiple functions controlled by a single button (Nichols and Myers, 2003). There are a number of universal remote technologies that are both currently in development and currently available. The Accenda ® is an accessible universal remote control, which has been designed to accept speech input as well as standard push-button-controls input. The remote also provides verbal feedback to the user to indicate what functions have been performed and what button is currently being depressed. Presently the Accenda is able to control entertainment devices and recognizes up to 50 voice commands (Innotech Systems Inc., 2002). The Pebbles Project at Carnegie Mellon University is conducting a research project to explore ways in which they can enable users to control computerized electronic devices using handheld devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) (Myers, 2003a). A Personal Universal Controller (PUC) is essentially a high-tech remote control. When a user aims their hand-held PUC at an electronic device, the device and the PUC communicate with each other in order to create an interface suitable for controlling the device. This communication will take into account the input and output modalities available on the PUC, the pre-programmed functional needs of the user, and the requirements of the device being controlled. The user can then control the device using the hand-held PUC (Myers, 2003b). A study regarding use of built-in appliance interfaces versus remote control interfaces shows "that users were twice as fast and made half as many errors when using the (remote control) PDA interface, as opposed to the actual appliance interface (Nichols and Myers 2003)." The Universal Speech Interface project (USI), also known as Speech Graffiti, is in the preliminary stages of development of a universal speech interface. This interface is intended to ease the burden of communication between humans and machines (Rosenfeld, 2003). The ICrafter is a "service framework for a class of ubiquitous computing environments known as interactive workspaces (Ponnekanti, Lee, Fox, Hanrahan, and Winograd, 2001)." Researchers at Stanford University are developing the ICrafter to allow people in these environments to freely access the devices that are available to them using whatever computer or accessory that they have available. For example, if a web browser is available in a given work environment, all of the people who have access to a device (such as a PDA, web enabled cell phone, or laptop) should be able to utilize that program (Ponnekanti, et al. 2001). In order to use such a system, researchers at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center insist that you must first create a platform on which to run these systems. They are developing the Platform Independent Model for Applications or PIMA, which "provides the model, language and run-time support to build and execute applications that are capable of being run on any device that enters an environment (Banavar, et al., 2000)." Researchers at Brigham Young University are working on a similar project. The XWeb Project claims that "for each interactive situation, an interactive computing and information platform can be constructed. Each platform will have interactive devices adapted to the interactive situation (Olsen, 2003)." In this way, users can choose any variety of input and output devices, depending on their needs. The National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) has created a technical committee called V2. V2 is currently developing standards for an Alternative Interface Access Protocol (AIAP)-Universal Remote Console (URC). "The AIAP-URC is a standard interconnection protocol that allows users to control a mass-market device/service (target). The URC may be a dedicated device or a feature running on a computer, a cell phone, an assistive technology, or other device (LaPlant, 2003)." Once deployed, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize product design by establishing mechanisms for device control that are usable by consumers regardless of functional limitations. However, in order for these projects to be successfully implemented, there must be a convergence between those persons conducting the studies, manufacturers of devices and appliances, and consumers. [ Top of Page ] Technology RequirementsConsumers, manufacturers, clinicians, researchers and other stakeholders have identified requirements for a personal accessor that will significantly enhance the ease of use of consumer electronics products. These specifications include the following:
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