"I Shake The Package To Check If It's Mine": A Study of Package Fetching Practices and Challenges of Blind and Low Vision People in China

TL;DR

This study explores the challenges faced by blind and low vision individuals in China when fetching packages, highlighting accessibility issues with collection sites and self-service machines, and proposing design improvements.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the specific difficulties BLV people encounter in package retrieval and suggests design considerations for more accessible solutions.

Findings

BLV individuals struggle to locate collection sites and packages.

Difficulty in interacting with KuaiDiGui touch screens and workflows.

Challenges in opening target compartments for BLV users.

Abstract

With about 230 million packages delivered per day in 2020, fetching packages has become a routine for many city dwellers in China. When fetching packages, people usually need to go to collection sites of their apartment complexes or a KuaiDiGui, an increasingly popular type of self-service package pickup machine. However, little is known whether such processes are accessible to blind and low vision (BLV) city dwellers. We interviewed BLV people (N=20) living in a large metropolitan area in China to understand their practices and challenges of fetching packages. Our findings show that participants encountered difficulties in finding the collection site and localizing and recognizing their packages. When fetching packages from KuaiDiGuis, they had difficulty in identifying the correct KuaiDiGui, interacting with its touch screen, navigating the complex on-screen workflow, and opening the target compartment. We discuss design considerations to make the package fetching process more accessible to the BLV community.