Innovations for the disabled

There are several tools these days to help the disabled with operating a computer. I will tell you about a couple of these in this blog.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed an eye-tracking device. This was developed to help astronauts dock the spaceships in orbit. Now this device is a tool to allow people who cannot type with their hands use their eyes to do so. This system uses an infrared beam to illuminate the user`s face and a small video camera to record the position of the eyes. It calibrates itself while the user stares at a series of markers that appear at specific locations on the computer screen. Then the markers are replaced by an onscreen keyboard. By moving his eyes, the user can direct a small red dot around the keyboard and "type" specific letters by holding his gaze for a half a second. The cost of this device is around $2500.00

For people who cannot use a mouse there is TetraMouse. The TetraMouse is a low cost full featured, dual joystick or mouse designed to operate with the lips for those with little head movement or with the tongue (special cup shaped knobs available) for those with no head movement. There are two joysticks on this device, one positions the mouse pointer and the other performs left, right, left click and hold, right click and hold and middle scroll button functions. There is no additional software required. The computer sees it as a standard mouse. The cost of this device is $250.00.