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Accessibility for People with Limited Mobility?

Posted by Cliff on from the hands-free-computing dept.

rscrawford asks: "There's an older woman at my church who suffers from advanced Parkinson's Disease. She's in good spirits but misses being able to communicate with her children who live far away. Because she she has advanced tremors and her muscles have atrophied, she can no longer use a keyboard; and because her voice quavers, she probably wouldn't be able to use voice recognition software. Now, I've seen tools for people who are vision impaired or who have cognitive impairments, but what about people like this woman? Are there any tools that would help her use her computer to e-mail her children?"

8 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. well by PunkOfLinux · · Score: 3, Informative

    I remember reading about a mouse software or driver or something that was specifically designed for people with unsteady hands. What it does is it takes the average of the cursor position and gives that to windows to work with.

    Another solution you might want to look into would be engineering something that could track the movement of part of her body and translate that into mouse movements.

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    1. Re:well by itwerx · · Score: 2, Informative

      One of the symptoms is random advanced tremors, to quote the question. try translating that random information into logical mouse movements, genius.

      And if you'd followed the original link and read up on the device in question you'd know that it is an adaptor designed to interpolate those "random" movements into something useful.
            As it happens a client of mine has Parkinson's and has been using one of those little boxes for a few months now and absolutely loves it!
            (Egads, I'm going to have start reading at +2 with this kind of signal-to-noise ratio...!)

    2. Re:well by itwerx · · Score: 2, Informative

      ...mouse software or driver or something that was specifically designed for people with unsteady hands...

      You mean this?
      (It's completely hardware based so not limited to just Windows).

  2. Get her a BigKeys keyboard by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Informative

    They have keys that are 4 times as big as standard keyboard keys. Recommended for those suffering from Parkinson's. Also good for getting toddlers hooked on computers.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. solutions by barryfandango · · Score: 2, Informative
    • Mouse driver with wobble correction. They're out there.
    • Eye-tracking hardware lets you use your eyes as a mouse pointer. That might work for her.
    • A helper monkey could take dictation, prepare light meals and take out the trash.
    --
    In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
  4. On-Screen Keyboard by Mooga · · Score: 2, Informative
    Windows has a built in on-screen keyboard. I've worked with disability resorcesbefore and I've heard that this can be very useful for people who have limited conrtol over their muscals. The on-screen keyboard is easy enough to use and has plenty of setings. There is even a setting where you don't need to click the buttons, just lay your curser over the button for X seconds.

    Start, Accessories, Accessibility, On-Screen Keyboard.

    The only posible problem is that the keyboard is on the smaller side. Your cna change the font size but not the button size.

    --
    ~ Mooga
  5. Low tech solution by Sicarius-128 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Search for a keyguard. It's a plate that goes over a normal keyboard that has holes in it. It allows the user to hook their finger in the right hole for a key and then apply pressure to press that key. Simple and effective.

  6. Guarded keyboard, virtual keyboard by yabHuj · · Score: 4, Informative
    Others already mentioned mouse drivers with jitter correction, eyetracker, oversized keyboards.

    Other things I have seen:

    • A standard (or oversized) keyboard with a guidance grid (key-/finger-sized holes) mounted a few mm above the keys. Hand and fingers can rest and tremble until the correct key(hole) is found and pressed. Inhibits accidentally pressing the wrong key and is comparatively cheap. Hazardous for finger joints for people with too forceful tremor or spastic jerks, though. See e.g. http://www.keytools.com/keyboards/guarded.asp (found trough google). Decreasing or disabling autotype/repeat will help here as will anti-repetition keyboard drivers.

    • Input systems where you select the key with buttons, laserpointer, shouts, etc. like http://www.keytools.com/keyboards/lucy_comms.asp (google again). A famous example is the text2sound machine Stephen Hawking is using. Not cheap if done in hardware.

    • Maybe just try as first "zero-investment" help: switch the mouse driver to low response and no (ZERO) acceleration. Then let her use a virtual keyboard with a size she can work with (small enough to be fast, big enough to be jitter-resistant), see e.g. http://www.freewarehome.com/System_Utilities/Tools _For_Disabled_p.html, http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/ or even the builtin

    • Similar to above - but useful even if her tremors are too high for moused usage: Get a joystick/gamepad she can handle - or re-build one from a cheap gamepad (to be dissected - keep the electronics, dump the mechanics) and low-injury (light-/emergency) switches where she does not scratch herself on the edges. Set her PC to use the microsoft virtual keyboard click/select mode mode http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp /usingkeyboard.aspx

    • If her tremors are even to high for that, set the virtual keyboard to scanning mode and give her one single trigger (from the gamepad/joystick you built before). Select a trigger/switch she can control best (finger, hand, foot, head, shoulder, tongue, breathing, ...


    Good luck!