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A Recipe for Success? Exploring Strategies for Improving Non-Visual Access to Cooking Instructions

Franklin Mingzhe Li, Ashley Wang, Patrick Carrington, Shaun K. Kane

TL;DR

The paper investigates how to improve non-visual access to cooking instructions for people with vision impairments via qualitative interviews with 20 blind home cooks and 4 adaptive cooking instructors. It identifies three cooking phases where recipe access matters, elucidates desired content and structural features (e.g., non-visual descriptors, summaries, discrete steps, substitutions), and proposes design guidelines for technology to support organization, navigation, customization, and hands-free interaction. Key contributions include a nuanced understanding of preferred recipe representations, practical strategies (e.g., memorization, device protection, modular steps), and forward-looking opportunities like a non-visual substitutions database, automatic extraction from media, and multimodal, conversational kitchen interfaces. These insights inform the development of accessible kitchen technologies that reduce cognitive and physical effort, enhance autonomy, and bridge in-class learning with at-home practice.

Abstract

Cooking is an essential activity that enhances quality of life by enabling individuals to prepare their own meals. However, cooking often requires multitasking between cooking tasks and following instructions, which can be challenging to cooks with vision impairments if recipes or other instructions are inaccessible. To explore the practices and challenges of recipe access while cooking, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 people with vision impairments who have cooking experience and four cooking instructors at a vision rehabilitation center. We also asked participants to edit and give feedback on existing recipes. We revealed unique practices and challenges to accessing recipe information at different cooking stages, such as the heavy burden of hand-washing to interact with recipe readers. We also presented the preferred information representation and structure of recipes. We then highlighted design features of technological supports that could facilitate the development of more accessible kitchen technologies for recipe access. Our work contributes nuanced insights and design guidelines to enhance recipe accessibility for people with vision impairments.

A Recipe for Success? Exploring Strategies for Improving Non-Visual Access to Cooking Instructions

TL;DR

The paper investigates how to improve non-visual access to cooking instructions for people with vision impairments via qualitative interviews with 20 blind home cooks and 4 adaptive cooking instructors. It identifies three cooking phases where recipe access matters, elucidates desired content and structural features (e.g., non-visual descriptors, summaries, discrete steps, substitutions), and proposes design guidelines for technology to support organization, navigation, customization, and hands-free interaction. Key contributions include a nuanced understanding of preferred recipe representations, practical strategies (e.g., memorization, device protection, modular steps), and forward-looking opportunities like a non-visual substitutions database, automatic extraction from media, and multimodal, conversational kitchen interfaces. These insights inform the development of accessible kitchen technologies that reduce cognitive and physical effort, enhance autonomy, and bridge in-class learning with at-home practice.

Abstract

Cooking is an essential activity that enhances quality of life by enabling individuals to prepare their own meals. However, cooking often requires multitasking between cooking tasks and following instructions, which can be challenging to cooks with vision impairments if recipes or other instructions are inaccessible. To explore the practices and challenges of recipe access while cooking, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 people with vision impairments who have cooking experience and four cooking instructors at a vision rehabilitation center. We also asked participants to edit and give feedback on existing recipes. We revealed unique practices and challenges to accessing recipe information at different cooking stages, such as the heavy burden of hand-washing to interact with recipe readers. We also presented the preferred information representation and structure of recipes. We then highlighted design features of technological supports that could facilitate the development of more accessible kitchen technologies for recipe access. Our work contributes nuanced insights and design guidelines to enhance recipe accessibility for people with vision impairments.
Paper Structure (64 sections, 3 figures, 3 tables)

This paper contains 64 sections, 3 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Accessibility of Cooking and Meal Preparation for People with Vision Impairments
  4. Accessible Technology in the Kitchen
  5. Electronic Recipes and Cooking Instructions
  6. Method: Interviews with Home Cooks & Adaptive Cooking Instructors
  7. Interview with Blind Cooks
  8. Participants
  9. Pre-interview Survey
  10. Home Cook Interview
  11. Recipe Review and Collaborative Editing
  12. Interview with Adaptive Cooking Instructors
  13. Participants
  14. Adaptive Cooking Instructor Interview
  15. Data Analysis
  16. ...and 49 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: Illustration of cooking phases using example from process to cook Beef Wellington from a Recipe
  • Figure 2: Participants altered objects to make them more accessible, such as by adding NFC labels to spice jars.
  • Figure 3: Technology used to accessing recipes. (a) P4 uses an accessible audio player to play back recipes; (b) P2 puts cling wrap on their laptop to prevent it from getting dirty; (c) P11 uses a smart speaker in the kitchen to access recipes and timers hands-free.