'Smart bulb' makers forgot about epilepsy.

Smart bulb makers need to design bulbs with everybody's safety in mind, not just the majority.

The Problem

If you've ever set up one of those smart home light bulbs, you've likely seen it go into pairing mode, during which it repeatedly flashes on and off. For people living with photosensitive epilepsy, this can become a serious hazard. While using a flashing light generally is less of a problem on a small scale, scaling it up to things like overhead lighting and floor lamps can be outright dangerous.

On several occasions, I've had to ask family members to leave the room while setting up smart devices. This shouldn't be necessary.

An Easy Solution

With the dangers in mind, the solution becomes glaringly obvious. A light doesn't need to blink continuously to indicate its status. Slowly dimming and brightening the light once would suffice, while greatly reducing the danger to people with epilepsy. Even a simple change of colour could effectively indicate setup mode.

There's no fundamental change required here, only a small tweak that, in hindsight, would solve a very overlooked problem. It's time to make smart bulbs safer.