Eye See What You Are Saying Part 2

July, 2020

Thanks to funding from the Golden West Chapter of the ALS Association and the efforts of Amy Roman, I was able to participate in a remote system evaluation trial allowing me to test drive a number of assistive communication units. Through the trial I chose a suitable eye tracker device. I can now grace the world with my incessant but constructive harrangues.

A key player on the road to eye tracker facility is your communication partner. Typically one or more of your caregivers, these are the folks that try to decipher your grunts into computer commands. They are indispensable in calling user support, especially when configuring your system. My device company has excellent voice user support. Problem is that I have no voice. I am fortunate that my caregiver is computer literate for the most part and can resolve most issues with the help of support. You still have to cut your communication partner some slack, such as when they try to execute an application by touching a run button on a user support screen shot.

Which brings to the number one challenge: Frustration.

Frustration is a big one. I’m about as mellow as a caffeinated New Yorker. The process of chasing each letter on a qwerty keyboard graphic with just my eyeballs while keeping my head perfectly still takes some getting used to. This was and is a particular challenge when you are trying to focus on a key in the upper right corner of the keyboard region. This is the same region where is found the all important backspace key or, as I call it, the correction key. You invariably miss hitting this key because it is so hard to effectively target in this region. Its location also keeps things interesting. The backspace key is located, on one side, by the key which drops you into the mathematical functions keyboard where the key back to the qwerty keyboard is conveniently located on, you guessed it, the upper right corner. Directly below our backspace key is a letter that you keep hitting when you’re trying to hit the backspace key which you now have to hit again because you just hit that letter when you were trying to hit the backspace… You get the idea.

Luckily my device contains an application called computer control. This application reduces the frustration arising from your inability to use a mouse to point and click and scroll and drag and drop and do many of the wonderful tasks that keep the mouse parked at our side.

Let me give you an example. When web surfing, you have to get the cursor into the search window. In systems without computer control the cursor jumps around like a meth crazed frog impossible to coax into that search window. With a computer control function the cursor is off its bender. You can point to the general area you want to target and then it will magnify the area to enable you to more easily zoom into your spot.

It’s not without its drawbacks, however. Sometimes the icon that allows you to access your desired function won’t show up or disappears when you look at it. This most often occurs when you are trying to close or minimize an application. Somehow it just has a tough time locking on to those little tiny dash or x icons. Maybe it’s because they are located in the upper right … Oh, forget it.