Accessibility for People with Limited Mobility?

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?"

Comments

well

[PunkOfLinux]

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.

Re:well

[lanswitch]

I think that there is another point to be made here. The lady is not able to use a keyboard, and speech is problematic. This situation will not get better. So do not focus on the technology she cannot use, but look elswhere for the solution. Perheps the best way to help her (in more than one way) is by having somebody else type the messages for her. Perhaps a nice voluntary job for the poster? Yes, this will cost time, and no, this problem cannot be bought off by installing some gizmo. If you want to help her, invest time.

Re:well

[itwerx]

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...!)

Re:well

[itwerx]

...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).

Computer Voice Synthesizer

[imstanny]

How about something along the lines of what Stephen Hawkings uses? He only has one operational finger, I believe. Although, it might be out of her price range?

Get her a BigKeys keyboard

[QuantumG]

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.

Help her yourself

[Max von H.]

The easiest and best way would most certainly be to go there yourself, keep her company for awhile, and type her e-mails! It'll be a lot nicer for her in all aspects, whithout having to devise complex stuff for her to use *alone*, which will be most likely difficult and tiring for her.

Stop being a geek for a few hours and be a human friend. Parkinson's disease is extremely tiring, people affected by it at the stage you describe benefit a lot more from some human presence than any gadget, unless of course if such gagdget were to function seamlessly (wich it prolly won't).

Cheers,

Re:Help her yourself

[Tango42]

Having someone there would be good, I'm sure, but she might also want some independence. Being dependant on someone coming over to help with her email means she have to plan everything around when they can be there. It also means there's no privacy in her communication.

Re:Help her yourself

[fm6]

Friendship and helping others is always a good thing. But you're still way off base. A good, helpful friend helps you deal with your problems -- they don't make you dependent on them. Which is why (from what I can see) disabled people really hate hovering do-gooders.

Anyway, for many isolated people, the Internet is itself an important source of human contact. If disability cuts a person off from this resource, it makes perfect sense to help them find the adaptive technology that will de-isolate them.

Morse?

[Vo0k]

Try Morse code, and recognition + morse->text conversion software. With Parkinson's disease she could get a nice WPM rate, but it would be hard for her not to send long strings of "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" instead of pausing. ;)

solutions

[barryfandango]

• 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.

On-Screen Keyboard

[Mooga]

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.

Dasher

[Apreche]

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

Voice recording?

[Cyphertube]

Instead of sending regular e-mail, perhaps she could send out voice recordings.

With a simple interface, she could record the messages she wants to send, have them converted to .mp3 or .ogg or whatever, and send them to family. Granted, I would recommend that the family all get Gmail accounts or similar for space.

With a good user-friendly interface, she could then get replies from the family, read them, and record a reply.

While her voice may not be good enough for voice recognition software, I'm sure that someone could help her get set up to at least record her voice well enough that her family could receive it.

video phone

[hoggoth]

Forget email, set her up with Packet8 or Vonage VOIP with a videophone, and get her kids the same. Set up a big speed dial to dial her kids.

Low tech solution

[Sicarius-128]

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.

Guarded keyboard, virtual keyboard

[yabHuj]

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!

Re:Guarded keyboard, virtual keyboard

[harryman100]

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.

My grandad has one of these (he suffers from something I can't remember the name of which basically makes him very clumsy, and often unable to control his movements). It's bigger than the one you link to, and coloured to help with poor eyesight, but the principle is the same. However, it solves the problem of getting your finger caught during a tremor/jerk by having the guard closer to the keyboard, and being touch sensitive.
If the person involved is susceptable to large uncontrollable movements, I suggest attaching it to the table, so that they don't knock it to the floor (possibly yanking cables).

They work well for people who have very little control over their hand movements, as they can seperate the movements required to get their finger in the right place and push the button.

I recommend though, if you get her one of these with the delayed keypresses, you take your own keyboard with you when you visit and need to fix things. They're not easy to use if you have full speed fingers!!!

Have you tried voice recognition or just assuming?

[gothzilla]

Dragon voice recognition software might surprise you. When I worked at a school district I got a pc set up for a disabled student. He could barely speak and unless you'd spent a few months with him learning to listen you couldn't understand him. Dragon picked up on it just fine and after a few weeks of training it was working beautifully. This was a number of years ago so I imagine the software has only gotten better.

Communications tools of the past

[amliebsch]

Truly, I think you are overcomplication the problem. Here is how it looks to me:

Requirements:

Communicate with children remotely.

Not require great dexterity or voice control.

Be easy to use.

Be low cost.

I think the device that best meets all those requirements is the telephone. Simple and robust. If cost is an issue due to long distance rates, encourage her to use SkypeOut or some similar VoIP alternative.