[Kde-accessibility] Eye pointing devices

[Peter Korn]

Hi Bill, Olaf,

>> Has anyone experiences with eye pointing devices under Linux?
>>
> Hi Olaf and Gunnar:
> 
> Unfortunately I do not know of any eye-trackers available for Linux; I 
> am only aware of Windows-based systems.  In theory a windows PC could be 
> used to operate the eye tracker, which could be connected via a serial 
> connection to a Linux box.

There are some two-PC solutions, where one PC simply pretends to be a mouse 
and keyboard for the other.

> Eye trackers can be fatiguing for users with good optical muscle 
> control, so this may be a difficult solution, and in any case it's 
> expensive.  If at all possible, I would recommend trying a head-tracking 
> system such as the Madentec "Tracker One".
> 
> There are other possibilities, such as devices which detect changes in 
> skin conductivity, etc. to trigger switches.  If your mother can control 
> her blinking without too much fatigue, there are "headbands" which 
> detect blinks.  These are not off-the-shelf items, unfortunately, they 
> are research items.

The state of the art in skin conductivity is very disappointing.  These 
systems take multiple seconds to detect a change - imagine a single switch 
system where each press to 5-10 seconds to initiate.

> My guess is that some sort of switch-based device, with GOK used in 
> scanning mode, is your best option.  The trick is finding a suitable 
> method of triggering the switch.
> 
> You might contact the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology 
> Research Center to see if they have experience with input devices for 
> situations such as your mother's.  http://www.utoronto.ca/atrc/
> David Bolter of GOK (david dot bolter at utoronto dot ca) is probably 
> out of the office for a couple of days, I don't know, but it's worth 
> contacting him; he may be able to point you to the right researcher(s).

Also contact the Dasher folks, who have done a lot of work with eye-gaze 
technologies, and may well have tested them hooked up to Linux systems.  Try 
Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org>, who has done a lot of the work 
hooking up Dasher to the GNOME accessibility APIs.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team

> Bill
> 
>> We need to set up such a system for our mother within a few weeks (for 
>> GOK+KMouth), and the doctors don't even know that eye pointing devices 
>> exist, so they are no help.
>>
>> Any information (even if it just a link to a page you remember seeing 
>> once) would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Olaf
>>
>> - -- Olaf Jan Schmidt, KDE Accessibility Project
>> KDEAP co-maintainer, maintainer of http://accessibility.kde.org
>>
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