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AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

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Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#51

Post by vxNsr »

hedora wrote: post #49
Detrytus wrote: post #2

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?

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 padd…

> It also lasted at least 30 years.

Well therein lies your problem, every company that makes good long lasting things ends up going under.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#52

Post by jghn »

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#53

Post by scrum-treats »

wincy wrote: post #22

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 400° Fahrenheit for t…

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...

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#54

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#55

Post by hedora »

nolok wrote: post #35
LightBug1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a WIFI label on mine, had it for years ... I still don't know what it's for.

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.

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#56

Post by miki123211 »

bhaney wrote: post #13
Detrytus wrote: post #2

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?

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 br…

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#57

Post by housemusicfan »

wincy wrote: post #22

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 400° Fahrenheit for t…

> I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° 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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#58

Post by giraffe_lady »

housemusicfan wrote: post #57
wincy wrote: post #22

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 400° Fahrenheit for t…

> I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° 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 foo…

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#59

Post by shagie »

shagie wrote: post #44

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 400°F for 15 minutes, steam at 425°F for 3 minutes, and then broil for 2 minutes. It can also do some groceries from the barcodes on there. I was pleased…

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.

Re: AmazonBasics Microwave: Accessible for People with Visual Impairments (2019)

#60

Post by 0xFFOOFF »

ck2 wrote: post #42

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.

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