Voice assistance and accessibility
How voice assistants like Alexa and Google can help make your home more accessible.
Summary
Voice assistance is a hands-free method of controlling your devices. Today, voice assistants are available on more than just your smartphone, they can be connected to special light bulbs, appliances, and special voice assistant speakers like a Google Home or Amazon Echo. Read more to find out what these voice assistants are and how they can help you at home.
What is voice assistance?
Traditionally technology is used by typing on a keyboard or phone. Using voice assistance is a way of accessing technology by using your voice.
Software which recognises voice commands is already present on many commonly used devices such as phones, tablets, smart speakers, and smart watches – you may have heard of Alexa (Amazon), Siri (Apple), and Google Assistant (Google). With this software people are able to do a large range of tasks by ‘speaking’ to their device. Common tasks which can be completed include making a phone call, sending a text message, setting a reminder, and asking for information to be read out.
By connecting household appliances, such as lights, air conditioners, music systems, and washing machines with technology voice assistance, it can be used to do everyday activities such as turning lights on and off and using household appliances.
Use of voice over assistance with vision loss
Voice assistance can provide increased independence for people with vision loss. Instead of relying on your vision to see information on a screen you can simply ask your device to complete a task, and in some cases read information back to you.
By connecting your household appliances to voice assistant technology you can turn appliances on and off and change settings such as temperature. This reduces the need to see information on the small panels on appliances, and to move from one room to another.
How to set up voice over assistance
If you have a smart phone, it is likely that you already have access to a voice assistant which you can use to complete many everyday activities. In many cases it can be as simple as ‘asking’ your phone to do something, for example ‘Call mum’. Some ideas which you could use voice over assistance for are: creating a shopping list, playing music, turning on and off lights or appliances, set alarms or timers, getting news or weather, and much more.
Setting up your home devices will take a little more planning. There is lots of information available on the internet as a starting point. Read this Wired article for more information.
For more information
- You can find more information on Voice Over Assistance from places such as Accessibility.com.
- The Guide Dogs Assistive Technology Team may be able to help you.
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