Lost in Instructions: Study of Blind Users' Experiences with DIY Manuals and AI-Rewritten Instructions for Assembly, Operation, and Troubleshooting of Tangible Products

Authors

• Monalika Padma Reddy, Stony Brook University
• Aruna Balasubramanian, Stony Brook University
• Jiawei Zhou, Stony Brook University
• Xiaojun Bi, Stony Brook University
• IV Ramakrishnan, Stony Brook University
• Vikas Ashok, Old Dominion UniversityFollow

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1145/3772318.3790955

Publication Title

CHI '26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages

1247

Conference Name

2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 13-17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

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.

Rights

© 2026 by the owner/authors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Reddy, M. P., Balasubramanian, A., Zhou, J., Bi, X., Ramakrishnan, I., & Ashok, V. (2026). Lost in instructions: Study of blind users' experiences with DIY manuals and AI-rewritten instructions for assembly, operation, and troubleshooting of tangible products. In N. Oliver, D. E. Shamma, H. Candello, P. Cesar, P. Lopes, A. Bozzon, T. Kosch, V. Liao, X. Ma, V. Artizzu, F. Draxler, G. López, A. V. Reinschluessel, X. Tong, & P. O. T. Dugas (Eds.), CHI '26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Article 1247). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790955

Repository Citation

Reddy, M. P., Balasubramanian, A., Zhou, J., Bi, X., Ramakrishnan, I., & Ashok, V. (2026). Lost in instructions: Study of blind users' experiences with DIY manuals and AI-rewritten instructions for assembly, operation, and troubleshooting of tangible products. In N. Oliver, D. E. Shamma, H. Candello, P. Cesar, P. Lopes, A. Bozzon, T. Kosch, V. Liao, X. Ma, V. Artizzu, F. Draxler, G. López, A. V. Reinschluessel, X. Tong, & P. O. T. Dugas (Eds.), CHI '26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Article 1247). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790955

ORCID

0000-0002-4772-1265 (Ashok)