Deaf and Hard of Hearing Access to Intelligent Personal Assistants: Comparison of Voice-Based Options with an LLM-Powered Touch Interface

We investigate intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people who can use their voice in everyday communication. The inability of IPAs to understand diverse accents including deaf speech renders them largely inaccessible to non-signing and speaking DHH individuals. Using an Echo Show, we compared the usability of natural language input via two spoken English methods against that of a large language model (LLM)-assisted touch interface in a mixed-methods study. The two spoken English methods consisted of Alexa’s built-in automatic speech recognition and a Wizard-of-Oz setting with a trained facilitator re-speaking commands. The touch method was navigated through an LLM-powered ‘task prompter,’ which integrated the user’s history and smart environment to suggest contextually-appropriate commands. Quantitative results showed no significant differences across both spoken English conditions vs LLM-assisted touch. Qualitative results showed variability in opinions on the usability of each method. Ultimately, it will be necessary to have robust deaf-accented speech recognized natively by IPAs.