TY - GEN
T1 - Lost in Instructions
T2 - 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2026
AU - Padma Reddy, Monalika
AU - Balasubramanian, Aruna
AU - Zhou, Jiawei
AU - Bi, Xiaojun
AU - Ramakrishnan, I. V.
AU - Ashok, Vikas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2026 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2026/4/13
Y1 - 2026/4/13
N2 - AI tools like ChatGPT and Be-My-AI are increasingly being used by blind individuals. Although prior work has explored their use in some Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tasks by blind individuals, little is known about how they use these tools and the available product-manual resources to assemble, operate, and troubleshoot physical/tangible products - tasks requiring spatial reasoning, structural understanding, and precise execution. We address this knowledge gap via an interview study and a usability study with blind participants, investigating how they leverage AI tools and product manuals for DIY tasks with physical products. Findings show that manuals are essential resources, but product-manual instructions are often inadequate for blind users. AI tools presently do not adequately address this insufficiency, in fact, we observed that they often exacerbate this issue with incomplete, incoherent, or misleading guidance. Lastly, we suggest improvements to AI tools for generating tailored instructions for blind users' DIY tasks involving tangible products.
AB - AI tools like ChatGPT and Be-My-AI are increasingly being used by blind individuals. Although prior work has explored their use in some Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tasks by blind individuals, little is known about how they use these tools and the available product-manual resources to assemble, operate, and troubleshoot physical/tangible products - tasks requiring spatial reasoning, structural understanding, and precise execution. We address this knowledge gap via an interview study and a usability study with blind participants, investigating how they leverage AI tools and product manuals for DIY tasks with physical products. Findings show that manuals are essential resources, but product-manual instructions are often inadequate for blind users. AI tools presently do not adequately address this insufficiency, in fact, we observed that they often exacerbate this issue with incomplete, incoherent, or misleading guidance. Lastly, we suggest improvements to AI tools for generating tailored instructions for blind users' DIY tasks involving tangible products.
KW - AI Tools
KW - Blind users
KW - DIY Tasks
KW - Interview Study
KW - Product Manuals
KW - Tangible Products
KW - Usability Study
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105038757844
U2 - 10.1145/3772318.3790955
DO - 10.1145/3772318.3790955
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105038757844
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2026 - Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A2 - Oliver, Nuria
A2 - Shamma, David A.
A2 - Candello, Heloisa
A2 - Cesar, Pablo
A2 - Lopes, Pedro
A2 - Bozzon, Alessandro
A2 - Kosch, Thomas
A2 - Liao, Vera
A2 - Ma, Xiaojuan
A2 - Artizzu, Valentino
A2 - Draxler, Fiona
A2 - Lopez, Gustavo
A2 - Reinschluessel, Anke V.
A2 - Tong, Xin
A2 - Toups Dugas, Phoebe O.
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 13 April 2026 through 17 April 2026
ER -