A case study on the use of IVR systems by visually impaired people

Abstract

Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS) have been used extensively to engage with poorly literate populations in the context of public health, farming, community radio, citizen journalism, and other sectors [2--7]. The voice based medium on IVRS, and the easy to use phone interface, seem to have been useful to help poorly literate and non-IT savvy populations to interact with automated computerized systems. In this study, we explore the use of IVRS for visually impaired people. To the best of our knowledge, we have not come across the use of IVR systems as an assistive technology to engage with this segment, and we describe an initial experiment we did in India. Based on our results, we feel much potential lies in researching this further because equivalent systems such as SMS and the use of screen-reading software on phones [1] are available to only trained or educated or higher income users from among visually impaired people.