Towards Intersectional Voice-UI Design Approaches for African American English Speakers with Dysfuencies
Overview
Conversational User Interfaces (CUI), such as voice assistants, offer great potential as a communication modality for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the limited research that has examined the design of CUIs with regard to race or disability considers each in isolation, neglecting the lived experiences of African Americans with speech dysfuencies. This position paper frst reviews literature considering race and disability in CUI design. We then explore compounding inequities at this intersection for African American English speakers who stutter. Finally, we invite participants to engage in inquiry around intersectional approaches to designing equitable CUIs that honor the intersection of race and disability.
Category
Position Paper
Timeline
March 2023
Collaborators
Aaleyah Lewis, Jay L. Cunningham, Orevaoghene Ahia, James Fogarty
Organization
UW HCDE; ACM CHI 2023
Overview
Conversational User Interfaces (CUI), such as voice assistants, are one of the most widespread examples of voice-based interaction, yet they generally fail to be inclusive of marginalized intersectional facets of identities. For example, the intersection of race and disability in CUI design remains understudied, especially for African Americans with associated English ethnolects and speech dysfluencies (e.g., stuttering). Although some research has examined the design of CUIs to be inclusive of race or disability, we argue that it is also important to consider this rich intersection of identities. In this position paper, we approach the inquiry of designing CUIs for the intersection of race or disability in three parts.
Provocation
In participating in this workshop, we look forward to positioning intersectional design approaches as equity-oriented research and design tools that can be promising sites of interventions for designing and building CUIs within the complexities of racial and disability identity. In doing so, we invite our community to explore and apply these frameworks in their own work and to further explore how intersectional approaches might better empower people such as African American English speakers with speech dysfluencies. It is our position that current compounding disparities and degraded experiences are a direct consequence of neutrality to intersectional aspects of identity such as race and disability.
Are you interested in engaging with this topic? Interested in collaborating?
Reach out to Jay Cunningham or Aaleyah Lewis - we're aiming for a paper contribution in late 2023.
