[HN Gopher] AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with V...
___________________________________________________________________
AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual
Impairments (2019)
Author : stacktrust
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-07-16 08:18 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.afb.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.afb.org)
| rootsudo wrote:
| I understand the article is about people with visual impairments,
| but why doesn't even it include a photo of the microwave in
| question? If you amazon the model number it takes you to another
| one altogether.
|
| Just too funny.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| While we are talking about improvements to household appliances,
| my partner had a moment of genius yesterday: Sodastream in the
| fridge. Since many refrigerators today have a water dispenser,
| why doesn't it include an option for a carbonated water
| dispenser? You'd think the manufacturers would love this as they
| could get recurring revenue same as water filters and air filters
| in the form of the co2 cartridges.
| HeroCC wrote:
| Sodastream and Samsung(?) had a partnership which did just this
| a while back! I told myself that when my current fridge died I
| would get one, and was actually a bit too excited when it
| finally passed. Unfortunately, I scoured the market and wasn't
| able to find a single one for sale, only references and manuals
| from models last produced several years ago.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| When the repair guy told us yesterday morning that our LG was
| dying, it meant a day of research to replace it... I still
| have a bad vibe for Samsung from a crappy experience 20 years
| ago, and I gotta say none of their refrigerators stacked up
| well by comparison in my grid. Not at all happy with LG at
| this point given that this fridge is barely 5 years old as
| the experience has been the opposite of what I had with my
| very still functioning 15 year old LG washer and dryer.
| Thinking Bosch, but then when I quizzed several friends the
| reviews were mixed there too.
| natebc wrote:
| Yeah it was Samsung. I had one of these. It was fine like
| you'd expect. It really was just an expensive gimmick.
| ttepasse wrote:
| A new, upmarket trend here in Europe is building carbonation,
| filtering, cooling and boiling water directly into the tap.
| Which is rather nice.
|
| https://watersystems.grohe.co.uk/en/
|
| https://www.quooker.nl/international
| pcdoodle wrote:
| [flagged]
| ck2 wrote:
| fun-fact:
|
| Most microwaves sold in the USA are made by just one company and
| rebranded like mad: Midea
|
| (toasters too)
|
| We will never, ever, be able to cut off China no matter how even
| worse their behavior becomes towards their own people or other
| countries in the future.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| And Whirlpool owns Maytag
| 0xFFOOFF wrote:
| [flagged]
| wincy wrote:
| Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of
| this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house
| on Thanksgiving.
|
| It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my
| kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal
| rack and the food on top. We'd done this dozens of times before.
|
| I then used Alexa from another room and said "Alexa, bake at
| 400deg Fahrenheit for twenty minutes". Later I looked at the logs
| and Alexa had caught the words "____ at 400deg Fahrenheit for
| twenty minutes" and took this to mean microwave. I'm not sure who
| specifies temperatures when microwaving, but that's how it
| interpreted these very specific instructions. I'd gotten in the
| habit of being extremely specific because a few times it had
| tried to microwave when I'd specified bake, and naively thought
| this specificity would avoid such an issue.
|
| Long story short I was having a nice shower when I smelled smoke,
| I basically got to live out the Disneyworld Carousel of Progress
| future scene when the oven went crazy. The metal cook pan
| embedded itself into the glass somehow and it smelled absolutely
| awful. We had to throw out the entire thing.
|
| I actually told this story to an Amazon Alexa lead Engineer at a
| conference in 2021. He said he'd look into it and the microwave
| disappeared off the market soon after, so I don't know maybe it
| was decided it was too dangerous of a product.
| djtango wrote:
| ...why doesn't Alexa confirm the actions it's going to take.
| "Starting the microwave for 20 minutes..."
| pc86 wrote:
| I haven't used any Alexa product in probably 10 months or so
| but I always remember it repeating whatever command it was
| doing.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| You can put it in reduced interactions mode or something
| like that which will make it speak less, but without
| testing this specific case it's impossible to know if it
| would have repeated or not.
| housemusicfan wrote:
| > I then used Alexa from another room and said "Alexa, bake at
| 400deg Fahrenheit for twenty minutes". Later I looked at the
| logs
|
| I like how at no point did you realize the complete and
| unnecessary idiocy of remote controlling potentially dangerous
| appliances.
|
| You have to walk up to it to put the food inside. Is pushing a
| few buttons afterward that difficult? Ok, so you sent your kid,
| you trust him or her to put the food inside but not operate the
| controls? What if your kid forgot to remove the cardboard
| wrapper?
|
| Why is this IoT nonsense needed? WHY? For the love of God
| someone please explain to me why this was invented and what
| non-problem it solves. You're not even supposed to leave a
| toaster unattended let alone a microwave oven. Anyone that
| thinks "blind people, did you read the article?" should know
| that braille keypads and egg timer style analogue knobs on
| microwaves existed 40 years ago.
|
| Things that can burn your house down should not be connected to
| the internet. There should be laws on the books for this. If
| you're so busy and so important that this presents an
| actionable problem then maybe you need a live-in
| housekeeper/butler.
|
| I know what you're thinking, oh you must be some Orcas Island
| Luddite who thinks we should go back to the stone ages. "I can
| preheat my Wi-Fi connected oven on the drive home!" So you
| trust the kid you didn't trust enough to operate the
| temperature controls, to not have hidden his toys inside. All
| so you can shave 10 minutes off your frozen pizza.
|
| We live in an era of amazing technology that is increasingly
| applied in the dumbest ways possible.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Eh they made a series of choices clearly planned for and
| intended and likely marketed by the creators of the devices.
| You're maybe right that it shouldn't exist, but given that it
| does the fault isn't with the user.
|
| But the voice controls being an accessibility boon is part of
| the current context here. I think they're exactly right to
| place the failure with amazon.
| xattt wrote:
| Did the command set it to combo microwave?
|
| I had an over-the-range combination range and have my share of
| complaints.
|
| I almost never used the the convection function, so there would
| be a dependable layer of grease build-up.
|
| For the convention or combination functions to work
| effectively, it needed time to come up to temperature, which
| meant "pre-heating" the element (and burning off the layer of
| grease).
|
| The ownership experience was constant maintenance of the
| element, as well as management of compatible materials for
| cookware.
|
| It met an untimely death when condensation from a microwave
| bottle sterilizer left overnight shorted out a door interlock
| and blew the internal fuse.
|
| In my dazed state of having a baby, it was less of a hassle to
| replace it with a microwave-only unit than it was to hunt down
| a fuse.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| That sounds really scary. FWIW, cooking appliances are not
| allowed to be started remotely in Europe, presumably for this
| same reason.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > I then used Alexa from another room...
|
| ...
|
| > maybe it was decided it was too dangerous of a product.
|
| That's almost certainly what happened. If you give people the
| ability to do something insane like turning on their microwave
| without being in the same room as it, somebody is going to be
| foolish enough to actually attempt that -- regardless of how
| pointlessly dangerous that is or how infinitesimal the amount
| of time or convenience that the ability to do so might create.
| [deleted]
| lozenge wrote:
| I like how you didn't report it to Amazon originally. How low
| are our expectations these days? "I almost started a fire, I
| guess I was just holding it wrong".
| scrum-treats wrote:
| Safe to say, yours was not the only high-severity complaint.
| And this microwave is not the only high-risk device.
|
| When you change ASR and Alexa functionality, don't forget to
| test more than Music and Video, else you might burn someone's
| house down. What is QA anyways...
| Detrytus wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but isn't an old school microwave with
| knobs and button even more accessible, thanks to tacile feedback?
| Why do they need to put AI in everything?
| beardyw wrote:
| My father-in-law has a special model, he is nearly blind and
| somewhat deaf - he is 94. He absolutely needs (loud) audio
| feedback for every operation and countdown for the timer. I can
| fully appreciate he would not manage with anything less.
|
| [By audio I mean spoken]
| hedora wrote:
| Microwave user interfaces are incredibly frustrating.
|
| My parents had one of the earliest commercial microwaves when I
| was growing up. It had:
|
| - two radio buttons (they were big plastic things, exactly one
| sticks out and is ready to be pressed at a time) to toggle
| between cook and defrost.
|
| - a timer knob that had a fin on the front. Turning the fin to
| 2' o'clock set it to one minute; noon meant "zero / done".
|
| - a paddle switch that opened the door.
|
| - a nice (internal) physical bell that the knob rang when it
| reached zero.
|
| It was completely accessible for blind people, and was
| infinitely easier to use than any of the digital models. It
| took one arm movement to close the door, and push the fin to
| the right angle.
|
| It also lasted at least 30 years.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _It also lasted at least 30 years._
|
| Well therein lies your problem, every company that makes good
| long lasting things ends up going under.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I have a WIFI label on mine, had it for years ... I still don't
| know what it's for.
| nolok wrote:
| It's for a price increase by looking edgy and modern. Oh wait
| you meant for you the user ? No, it doesn't serve any
| purpose.
| hedora wrote:
| You forgot planned obsolescence.
|
| Also, LG (of all the appliances we put in our house, LG
| has, by far, the shittiest software -- they are somehow
| worse than samsung) is going to move to a mode where you
| need to have the wifi connected so it can confirm that
| you've paid for your monthly appliance subscription, and so
| that the ads stay up to date. LG projects a 50% revenue
| increase from this (they are not planning to subsidize the
| purchase prices of their stuff; this is pure double-
| dipping).
|
| I think they are delusional, but, assuming it works, this
| means the subscription/ad revenue would add up to ~ 50% the
| price of the appliance on average.
|
| I guess people will just starve to death or something when
| their wifi routers go offline, but that's a small price to
| pay for an integer factor increase of LG's profit margins.
| graftak wrote:
| I have the cheapest microwave offering from Ikea, it has 2
| dials, no buttons. It is by far the best UI in my household.
| poleguy wrote:
| Buttons on a microwave are like features on a car (or in a
| software program). Great for comparative marketing, but do you
| really need all those features? Do they make it better?
|
| I bought this microwave, currently $74.97 and even my six year
| old could use it. I'm not blind, but I can't imagine why
| anybody needs all those buttons. I bought this because it saves
| me a couple seconds every time I use it. It is a better,
| simpler design, cheaper, and appeals to my favorite design
| principle: "what can we remove to make this better?" The only
| downside is that the electronics and mechanical parts are not
| built to last. But that's generally true of the expensive
| microwaves too, and they have more things that will break
| rendering the whole thing useless.
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BGTNY8O/
| jibe wrote:
| _Great for comparative marketing, but do you really need all
| those features? Do they make it better?_
|
| Depends what you value. Sounds like you are optimizing for
| speed of input, so a couple dials are going to be the best
| option. I like digital for the precise input. I throw a slice
| of cheese in for 8 seconds because I know that's how long it
| takes to get it from cold to to room temperature. It's a
| little harder to pick exact, short times on a dial. It is
| more of a trade off than one type of control is inherently
| better.
| vel0city wrote:
| I actually really enjoy the sensor cooking on my microwave.
| Single press reheat button, defrost by weight works really
| well, specific food cook modes are spot on (potatoes,
| popcorn, frozen veggies, chicken). Like, would you not want
| to just press a button once and have a, evenly cooked chicken
| breast? Or just put some frozen veggies in a bowl, press a
| single button, and they're nice and steamy every time?
| bhaney wrote:
| Anecdotally, the previous tenant of my apartment was blind, and
| the microwave installed in the kitchen had one of those
| perfectly flat keypads with no tactile feedback whatsoever. He
| was able to use it just fine by having some braille labels
| printed out with a label maker and stuck to the buttons. There
| was no label on the power setting button, so I assume that,
| like me, he's just never used it.
|
| He also used these braille labels to know where to turn the
| knobs on the washing machine, etc.
|
| There are a lot of accessibility improvements I'd think to
| reach for before AI.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Blind person here. This is a _lot_ easier to do if your
| device requires you to firmly press on the surface to
| activate the controls. If it doesn 't, you will inevitably
| activate something while trying to feel around for the label.
| There are ways around this, either a maze of long, thin seals
| that goes between the buttons and that you can move your
| fingers over, or a cardboard overlay with somewhat deep
| holes, but those devices are a lot more annoying.
|
| It's even worse when the device remembers its last state, and
| going pass the last option cycles back to the first. If this
| happens, there's no way to reliably set the temperature for
| example, as you don't know the current value and have no way
| of setting the device to a predictable state.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| In general, "lot of XYZ improvements I'd think to reach for
| before AI" should be the default for most problems.
|
| At this rate people will buying SortGPT before trying
| "sort()".
|
| Though some level of natural language interface does seem
| more immediately accessible. But maybe just having it read
| the display back to you would be far easier than involving
| some kind of AI cloud service.
|
| _Press time button some times (or hold)_
|
| "10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute,
| etc"
|
| _Press power button_
|
| "Full power, medium, low defrost"
|
| _Start_
|
| "Starting: 2 minutes at full power. Press again to cancel"
|
| Bonus points: your house doesn't become instantly
| inaccessible when the internet doesn't work, or the APIs the
| device uses are changed, or they "do a Nest". Of course this
| is a negative point for those hoping to sell you an AI
| Microwave and an AI Microwave 2 in 2 years time.
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| To be fair, SortGPT operates at web scale, which is pretty
| important for my temporarily embarrassed million-DAU
| service.
| dannyw wrote:
| For the vision impaired, it takes some effort to figure out
| what the knobs and buttons do; and what state/setting the
| microwave currently is in (e.g. what's the power level?)
| MrPatan wrote:
| The power knob controls and displays, visually and tactile-
| ly, the current power level.
| politelemon wrote:
| Right I'm wondering if I'm missing something too, although some
| parts were making sense like opening the box and the turntable,
| some parts read like workarounds to the situation? I hope
| someone better informed can chime in
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| arijun wrote:
| From the article, it seems there is tactile feedback on the
| buttons--the author says they aren't sure which button was the
| 2 button, implying they could differentiate buttons.
|
| Your solution seems strictly worse. If they're setting the time
| with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of
| the time? How do they change the power level, use the defrost
| mode, the popcorn preset?
|
| They don't _need_ to put AI into everything, but having these
| niceties often help those with disabilities navigate life more
| easily, and I'm all for it.
| deely3 wrote:
| > Your solution seems strictly worse. If they're setting the
| time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a
| guesstimate of the time? How do they change the power level,
| use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset?
|
| They could use knobs with beveled points and with clear
| beveled icons/text around the knobs?
|
| I suppose we should ask visual impired person instead of
| guessing.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >I suppose we should ask visual impired person instead of
| guessing.
|
| You mean like the one who presumably wrote the linked
| article that non-blind people are arguing against the
| suggestion from?
| sublinear wrote:
| > If they're setting the time with a knob, how do they get
| 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time?
|
| A stepped dial would solve this.
|
| > How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode,
| the popcorn preset?
|
| A grid of radio buttons would solve this.
|
| It's not like we don't know how to engineer accessible
| technology. They really do just want to cram AI into
| everything.
| ghusbands wrote:
| > A stepped dial would solve this.
|
| I've used many stepped-dial microwaves, and not a single
| one of them would be good for blind users. The step often
| changes size after a certain point and steps are often
| missed. If you're aiming for six and a half minutes, having
| to do mental arithmetic or keep careful track is not fun
| ("12 ticks to reach a minute and then 11 ticks of half
| minutes, and let's hope it actually got them all").
|
| In my direct experience, the best interfaces for blind
| users are ones that can have tactile/braille labels applied
| and ones with voice feedback, in that order.
| petepete wrote:
| What kind of feedback do you get from a grid of buttons?
| How do I know whether 1 is top left (like a phone) or
| bottom left (like a keyboard)?
|
| Once the initial setup is out of the way (which I admit is
| probably a bit of a pain) being able to either talk to it
| or have it announce what's about to happen seems like a
| good idea.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I don't know - I think for an awful lot of applications,
| language is the ideal interface.
|
| In 10 years, I want to be able to say "make me some toast
| and then go feed the cats" to my domestic robot, not sit
| there twiddling dials to select the toast function and
| accidentally combining the command with "feed cat" and
| ending up with "feed me toasted cat".
|
| Interfaces should be intuitive. Human language is intuitive
| for all humans who are ever likely to interact with an
| interface.
| ghusbands wrote:
| Look at the comment from wincy detailing very dangerous
| outcomes [1] to see why voice control might not always be
| best.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36745581
| yread wrote:
| Popcorn preset? Who uses that? What does it even do? Dont
| microwave popcorn bags just say 3 minutes at 600W?
| vel0city wrote:
| 3 minutes at 600W? My microwave is 1680W. What's the right
| conversion? Is this bag a little small, is this one a
| little large?
|
| My single button sensor has never made a bad batch yet.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Popcorn presets either detect steam once the popcorn is
| almost done popping (then runs for N more seconds), or
| actually use a microphone to detect the time between pops
| (I think the latter is more accurate). If done well, it can
| work well. Apparently it's often not done well because the
| bags of microwave popcorn almost always say "don't use
| popcorn setting!"
| ghusbands wrote:
| The problematic popcorn settings are the ones that don't
| have any such detection and instead ask you to enter a
| weight and they choose an amount of time based on that.
| It's very inaccurate and causes either many unpopped
| kernels or some burning.
| shagie wrote:
| The toaster oven that I use is Tovala as part of a prepared meal
| service... and they're fairly good.
|
| It uses QR codes on a recipe sheet to set up a sequence of events
| for the toaster oven. That is, if you scan the "chicken and bacon
| ranch Swiss melt" it will bake at 400degF for 15 minutes, steam
| at 425degF for 3 minutes, and then broil for 2 minutes.
|
| It can also do some groceries from the barcodes on there. I was
| pleased to find that the corn dogs that I occasionally got had a
| pre-programed recipe as do the single French bread pizzas.
|
| When its all done, the toaster oven beeps and I get a haptic
| feedback on my iWatch.
|
| It does have buttons and display for a regular sighted person too
| - its not a slave to the app and barcodes.
|
| I'll note that I don't know how the iPhone app fares for
| accessibility. However, I do know that someone could set up index
| cards with barcodes (QR or regular) on them and have it either
| run from its (limited) set of store bought grocery meals or run a
| recipe sequence associated with that barcode in the app. Those
| index cards could also have braille on them for instructions and
| identification.
|
| With some assistance and initial setup, it would be possible to
| that toaster oven to be a fairly accessible device for a set of
| meals (that can be extended with assistance).
| shagie wrote:
| To get an idea of what this could be like -
| https://imgur.com/a/Y1ccx5D except done as braille.
|
| The instructions for the toaster oven are encoded in the QR
| code.
| dubcanada wrote:
| This is a fantastic article, I never thought about a lot of this
| stuff, like describing how a package opens (what to expect first,
| what this styrofoam is for and what that is for).
|
| I wonder how the additional AI aspect will help, being able to
| upload a photo and ask AI what is in that photo in detail.
| Something like describe how to get the #2 button in this photo.
| Or in real time video.
|
| Also makes me wonder if FaceTiming AI which actively analysis the
| video could be a thing...
|
| I'm not much for thinking that extra tactile buttons means more
| accessible. I do think that Alexa would be 100% easier assuming
| it works fairly well. Which may or may not be true.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Apple recently previewed a feature called "Point and Speak"
| that does exactly this.
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-previews-live-s...
| ahmadalli wrote:
| BeMyEyes was working on an AI feature like this
| https://openai.com/customer-stories/be-my-eyes
| jghn wrote:
| I have one of these. I bought it because my previous microwave
| died and while I rarely used it I still wanted *something*. The
| Amazon Basics model was the one that managed to combine the form
| factor I wanted with a low price. I thought the Alexa integration
| was funny, but did not play into my decision.
|
| The Alexa integration was fun at first but I quickly stopped
| using it. At most it saves about 10 seconds of effort. But I
| could totally see how for a less able bodied person it'd be huge.
| lyrrad wrote:
| Looks like this microwave hasn't been sold (as new) on Amazon
| since May 2022, using CamelCamelCamel to look at the price
| history of this item (B07894S727), being last sold at $75.
| However, there are four other Alexa-enabled microwaves currently
| being sold on Amazon, for $143, $144, $300 and $2197.
|
| I wonder how long the Alexa integration will last. I suppose even
| if the Alexa integration is discontinued in the future, they
| would still continue to function no worse than regular
| microwaves.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| The blind people I know either favor the old fashioned microwaves
| with two analog knobs, one to set power and one mechanical timer,
| or just put a brail dot on the "30 more seconds" button like
| everyone else on the planet uses anyway 99% of the time. I can't
| imagine relying on a shitty voice assistant for this.
| sublinear wrote:
| > I initially had some difficulty pairing the microwave with my
| Echo Dot. After several attempts, the app said to press the
| number 2 button for four seconds, and the display will flash.
| Since I was not sure which button was number 2, _I needed sighted
| assistance._ Another option would have been to FaceTime a friend,
| or call Be My Eyes or AIRA. Initially, this procedure didn 't
| work and the devices wouldn't pair. I rebooted my iPhone, changed
| the microwave's location, and tried again. This time it worked. I
| don't know whether it was rebooting or changing location that
| allowed the devices to pair.
|
| This sounds way less accessible than a normal microwave
| kaibiprime wrote:
| Yeah the author says the microwave wasn't specifically designed
| to be accessible. But who hasn't once had trouble pairing their
| IoT devices?
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