#Fun4thedisabled highlights a variety of applications that allow people to access technology without using their hands, including Eyeflite and Eyegaze.
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This video introduces assistive technology used to communicate by typing, texting and surfing the web with the blink of an eye or the tilt of the head. Three different apparatuses are discussed: Eyeflite, Eyegaze, and Jabberwocky. They are all handsfree; you can send messages, write papers, and in some cases play games.
[Video begins with ‘fun 4 the disabled’ title screen. On screen text reads: Check out all the videos and written transcripts at fun4thedisabled.com. New screen text: Assistive technology- type, text, talk and surf the web with a blink of an eye and a tilt of the head.]
[Instrumental music begins and EYEFLITE appears on the screen.]
Justyna: Hey guys, this is Justyna. I’m with Fun 4 The Disabled and today I’m at the booth– eyeflite’s booth, and I’m here with Andrew and Tina who are the co founder and designer of eyeflite, respectively. So, hi Andrew and Tina how are you doing today?
Andrew: Good, how are you?
Justyna: I’m doing well, thank you! Now, this is some really cool software you have developed for The Oculus-
Andrew: Thanks!
Justyna: And I just want you to tell me a little more about how it works and how you came up with it.
[While Andrew speaks, a demo of eyeflite software is shown on the screen.]
Andrew: Cool! Yeah, so what we’ve built is a completely hands-free software environment. So for people with limited finger dexterity, um, so we’ve built it so that just using head movement, a person can be fully independent and control everything in that environment. And so, uh we’re currently building on a variety of features, and today we have a web browser, we have a YouTube portal, um, we have a note taking application, we’ve actually given the device its own phone number so it can send and receive text messages, you can type notes, and we even are starting to build hands free games, so that you can play games and have fun um, just by moving your head. Oh, and I guess one thing, we’ve also built it to where you can speak to type as well. We do have predictive text, so for dwell typing, um, but then we also are adding in the option to talk to type much faster. But what’s really cool about this product is that it, it connects just via Wi-Fi, it is its own computer, you don’t need a PC or a Mac or anything like that to operate it.
[Back to the three of them at sitting at the booth.]
Andrew: But what’s great is that about once a month we send a new software update. So you get like a new game and a new feature, and it’s all included, um so it’s always up to date and you never have to worry about any of that.
Justyna: So, I’m told that you came up with this idea after being a caregiver.
Andrew: That’s right.
Justyna: So could you tell me a little about that?
Andrew: That’s right. Back when I was in college studying engineering, I decided to um, take on a part-time job. And I actually got a job as a part-time caregiver for a boy with Cerebral Palsy. He was in middle school at the time. He only had partial motor function in his left hand, so it was difficult for him to um, type, to reply to emails…he had to write a paper for his school and it um, it was a three page paper, and it took him six days to write a three page paper. And so, once I saw that, um, being an engineer I started trying to figure out and design ways that we could try to improve this and make things better.
Justyna: And Tina, could you tell me a little bit about the design process and how you’re a part of this product?
[As Tina speaks, more demo footage is shown.]
Tina: Absolutely! So I kinda came on a little bit later in the game, I’ve been working with eyeflite for about a year now. Um, and originally, my role was testing. So I got to actually sit down with users and have them put the headset on, let them kinda play around with it, find the pain points, and uh, just keep designing from there. Within the last, I would say about three months? We’ve done a full refresh of the design, so um it’s a lot clearer, the buttons are easier to connect with and click on, um people can get in there and it’s very intuitive, so I mean especially with the younger kids, they get really excited. They put it on and we don’t even have to talk to them! They just dive right in and they’re able to get into games like that and just go. It’s been great.
Andrew: So we’ve found a lot of young people um, really like the capability to browse the web, to have that privacy, um because many times if they have a device mounted out in front of them, everyone can see what they’re doing. So it doesn’t matter if they’re texting their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatnot, with this they can actually now have that privacy and uh, for text messaging, for browsing, or when they’re playing games. And also, we found a lot of young people really love YouTube.
Tina: Oh, yes! [laughing]
Andrew: So we have a specific YouTube portal just for that. And just by using their head movement they can easily control the volume, the video, um, all kinds of things.
Justyna: Thank you for talking with us today, Andrew and Tina, I really liked talking with you and I really liked learning about this product so hopefully it can change someone’s life for the better.
Andrew: We hope so too! Thank you for having us!
Tina: Yeah, thank you!
[On screen text reads: Assistive Technology Demonstrated by Easter Seals DuPage. www.easterseals.com/dfv (630) 620-4433]
[Jamie Bodden appears on screen. While speaking, she demonstrates the program on the screen in front of her.]
Hi my name is Jamie Bodden, I’m a speech and language therapist in the Assistive Technology Department at Easter Seals Dupage. I evaluate and support through therapy, individuals who need to use alternate forms of communication. Today I’m going to show you a little bit of Eyegaze, this is on a front keyromic um, speech generating device. But when I do an evaluation I definitely look at all sorts of vendors like Tobii Dynavox, who also have Eyegaze as well.
So um, this page, so this device is actually reading my eyes. It’s reading the cornea, or the retinas of my eyes. You can see a blue dot occasionally go around, and if I sustain it, yeah. I think I’m going to actually change the page set. Because I want something that you guys can see a little bit bigger. How’s that? Okay? I have to do replace, and this is all I do. But I also work with low tech systems, I’m trying to find as much language, uh for an individual, with the least amount of effort. The device can do all sorts of things. It can– you can use direct hand access with your hands to activate it, an individual can use their eyes with eye gaze, um, an individual may also be able to use switches, which work– which scan through or step through the information. But this is on eye gaze now. So now you can see me a little bit better. Stop light play! And I’m just looking at words. And it’s reading my eyes.
[Device] Computer.
Fun4thedisabled: I like computer?
Jamie: Yes! [Laughing] So that’s the overview of that!
Fun4thedisabled: Cool! That’s really cool!
Thank you Vanessa!
Yeah, thank you!
[On screen text reads: Jabberwocky, Aaron Chaves, co-founder and CEO of Swiftable, appears on screen. While speaking, he demonstrates his product.]
We have a couple different assistive technology apps, um, they’re both based on a head tracking face control so if somebody doesn’t want to use touch to control their device. We have an assistive speech app so that you– if somebody has trouble with vocal speech, you can move your head around and type on a keyboard and then use text-to-speech to speak that way. And that’s that one over there. And this one, this is still in beta, it’s a web browser based on similar technology. So you move your head around and you scroll like up and down on a web page, and uh you blink to click on and follow the links, and you can…you can watch videos, you can check the news, get on Facebook, just anything that’s a website. You can interact with it that way. But really it’s just based on, you know, not needing your hands to be able to do things on your device. Let me try this, let’s see…there we go. Always better when we have a connection. Because it’s a web browser and all. So I just blink on that and then I move my head down and I can go to cnn.com, I blink to click on these things. You know as I move my head up and down I move the cursor up and down to scroll and I can just go find–
Fun4thedisabled: Oh wow!
I can look and say, maybe there’s some sports that I want to read about or something, they’re just still loading. Page is still loading, you can see that purple bar here so we need a sec. But in a minute it’ll bring up some boxes to kind of give me an indication of where I can click. Or if I know where I want to click I can actually blink twice, follow that. There. Yep, click on different things and I can read all the articles. I can scroll and move my head down and up to move the cursor around. I can uh, I can go to Facebook, go here, take me to Facebook. Now I can just sit here and see what all my friends are doin’, I can send a message, or send a message to myself just to show you an example. Just move down here and blink to click, and just say…Hi. It’s myself so Hi me. So I hit enter and send it, and you can see right here in the wall I just sent a message to me and I just sent a message on Facebook just by moving my head and blinking.
Fun4thedisabled: Cool!
[End credits]
Captioned by aslcaptions.com
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