Entries Tagged Motor impaired

SerialKeysX is an implementation of the SerialKeys protocol for Apple’s OS X operating system. It allows control of the computer’s keyboard and mouse over a serial connection from devices such as the EyeGaze and other augmented communication devices. You may download and use the software for free.

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Wow! Pete sent me this pointer to Opengazer. I’ve wondered if this was possible but never found a student to work on it. Thanks to Piotr Zieliński for developing it and making it open source. We’ll have great fun with this in accessible applications for people with impaired movement.

Gretchen sent a pointer to this inspirational AAC video.

Greg pointed me to this article over at CNN about Erik Ramsey and the work Phil Kennedy is doing with neural mapping. Very interesting work. The article mentions The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby; I’ve read that book and highly recommend it.

Alex sent a pointer to www.helpyouplay.com has some cool game ideas including an accessible version of Guitar Hero similar to our project last semester. I’m glad to see more work on accessible games.

Karen says:

I just got back from 3.5 days at a camp with 15 adolescents with significant disabilities. Most use AAC devices and some sort of alternate computer input. One teenage girl explained to me that she is pretty good in math but she has two problems as she tries to tackle high school math.

1. She needs on onscreen calculator that is scanning accessible and allows her to send the answer from the window on the calculator to the document she has open on her computer. For the most part, her documents are actually scanned omni-page or pdf files – she steps through answer fields using a tab key. Right now, the only option is to copy, minimize, activate the form, and paste – that is really hard for her.

2. She needs some sort of math program that allows her to show her work. There is a program called Math Pad that kind of lets you do this, but it stops at simple multiplications and division.

Also, I’ve had teachers of the visually impaired ask me for calculators that would enable kids to show their work.

People with severely impaired movement often use one or two switches to control their computers and/or communication devices. Even though the switch is arguably the simplest electrical component, when it becomes an assistive technology it is likely to cost the end user hundred’s of dollars. On the other hand, a fantastically complex electronic device, the USB camera, is available at discount stores for a few dollars. CamKeys is a simple python program that makes a cheap camera emulate any number of switches. It simply generates key events when user-specified regions of the camera image change.

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Daniel’s alternative pencil project has hit the email lists and has a nice review over at All Together We Can Do Our Best. I’m excited to see how user’s respond to his hard work.

Flexible keyboards like this, this and this are super cheap and readily available. I wonder if we could use them to make an alternative keyboard for people with physical, visual, or cognitive disabilities?

I’m thinking we could turn the keyboard over (keys down) and glue it to a thin board. I’m guessing the back of these things is pretty smooth. You’d put your tactile or visual overlay over the back of the keyboard. Now when the user presses, multiple keys will likely be activated. But we can handle that with a special keyboard layout as described here for Windows. I’m pretty sure there are comparable capabilities for Macs and Linux.

We could even define some sort of simple overlay maker that makes it simple to define and use specialized layouts. I’m guessing we could only support relatively large regions with this simple cheap approach.

Here’s an idea for a simple game to encourage movement to music. I’m drawing from our Comp 80 class ideas for Generalized DDR.

In this game the player moves to music. Their score depends on how well their movement is synchronized with the music and on how many different moves they made. A more advanced version allows them to play along with the music though various delays will have to be overcome to enable their sounds to be sync’ed with the music. The system keeps track of their score and rewards improvement. Perhaps new tunes get unlocked like in DDR.

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