Accessibility for All: Adaptive Computer Access Tools for the Neuro-motor Disabled in India

1. Accessibility for All: Adaptive Computer Access Tools for the Neuro-motor Disabled in India Presented By Animesh Mukherjee Research Scholar Department of Computer Science and Engineering IIT Kharagpur

2. The Mouse Unplugged The Keyboard Unplugged The Reality • Suppose you are asked to use a computer which has

3. The Divide • Nevertheless there is a big population in India (14.56 million approx) that experiences such a difficulty every day • These are people suffering from neuro-motor disorders • For them the presence or the absence of a mouse or a keyboard is always synonymous to its absence

4. Neuro-Motor Disorder – What is it ? • These disorders are caused by - • Faulty development of motor areas in the brain, or, • Total damage of these motor areas. Produces Nerve Cells that Causes Movements of the Body Parts Serves to Modify the Movements

5. Consequences … • Severe difficulty with fine motor tasks (like writing, stitching, using computer peripherals, and various other such tasks.) • Severe difficulty with any kind of communication. • In a nutshell, • Access to the computers is almost a “dream come true” • The presence/absence of the peripherals are irrelevant for them.

6. Can Computers Help • Certainly computers can help this population by being • An easy medium of communication (which they find very difficult) • An intelligent companion by understanding the needs and thereby reducing the communication efforts

7. The Impetus: Something Indian!! • Mainly the Indian scenario • Present systems are tuned to foreign socio-cultural context • All of them are imported – no local support • Costly for an average Indian user ( E Z Keys - $1400, Gyro-HeadMouse - $1495, CameraMouseTM - $695 + costly video camera) • Lack of Adaptation in existing systems

8. Contributions • Implementation of a virtual adaptive mouse – SweepSticks • This work was a joint effort of myself and one of my fellow researchers Mr. Koushik Chakraborty • Design and Implementation of the prediction support for a virtual keyboard (both Hindi and Bengali) – SulekhA • Field Testing and analysis of both SweepSticks and SulekhA

9. Courtesy IICP, Kolkata The Prelims: Special Access Mechanisms • Hardware Component – Depending upon the degree of their motor control the disabled people can use either one or at most two switches (specially designed for them) in order to access the computer.

10. Special Access Mechanisms (contd…) • Software Component • Scanning Mechanisms – Guided / periodic focusing and defocusing of screen elements. • Shift of focus – Shift operation (needs one switch) • Selection of a particular screen element – Register operation (needs another switch)

11. Co-ordinate Scan Matrix Scan (3D, 2D, 1D) Cartesian Polar Methods of Scanning

12. SulekhA: A Demo • SweepSticks: A Demo

13. ROOT of BST (-1000,-1000) [0] User clicks the point (25,40) on the screen User clicks the point (30,45) on the screen (25,40) [1] User clicks the point (15,25) on the screen User clicks the point (50,80) on the screen (15,25) [1] (30,45) [1] User clicks the point (15,20) on the screen (50,80) [1] (15,20) [1] Learning User Preferences

14. User clicks the point (15,25) once again (-1000,-1000) [0] User clicks the point (50,80) once again User clicks the point (15,20) once again (25,40) [1] (15,25) [2] (30,45) [2] fq = 1 fq = 1 fq = 1 (50,80) [2] (15,20) [2] fq = 1 Forming Paths Now if the user clicks the point (30,45) once again ???

15. Statistics … Statistics • SulekhA uses • Bigram Prediction Strategy for Word Level • The training corpus at present contains approximately 1 million words and 0.12 million distinct bi-grams. • The format of the corpus is shown below, <frequency bigram1 bigram2> • Unigram Prediction Strategy for Character Level • The training corpus at present contains approximately 1.3 million words and 0.05 million distinct unigrams. • The format of the corpus is shown below, <frequency unigram>

16. Character Level Word Level The Strategies

17. Shradha Writes with SulekhA

18. %Success = Assessments… • SweepSticks • Presently tested for four subjects at IICP Kolkata • Testing is done by measuring success and failure • Success - Each user is asked to open a particular application using SweepSticks. If the user is able to do the same in one go, with the minimum number of shift and register operations actually required to open the application, then it is a success, else failure. • Success and failures are measured for all the users for a number of sessions both in absence and presence of the adaptive help

19. Results

20. Assessments (contd…) • SulekhA • Typing rate (number of characters typed per minute) was measured • Measurements were taken when the prediction was not in use and also when in use

21. Usability 5 – Excellent, 4 – Good, 3 – Average, 2 – Difficult, 1 – Very Difficult

22. References • [1] Hufschmidt-Schneider M., Kuhme Thomas and Malinowski U., • Adaptive User Interfaces, Principles and Practice. • [2] Ahmed Seffah and Homa Javahery, Multiple User Interfaces, • Cross-Platform Applications and Context-Aware Interfaces. • [3] http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/aui.html • [4] http://www.words-plus.com • [5] http://www.advancedperipheral.com • [6] http://www.logitech.com • [7] http://cameramouse.com • [8] http://www.cirque.com • [9] http://orin.com/index.htm • [10] http://www.quadjoy.com • [11] http://www.censusindia.net/disability/disability_mapgallery.html • [12] http://www.webhealthcentre.com/general/cp_india.asp • [13] Kaul Sudha and Warrick A., Their Manner of Speaking, Indian • Institute of Cerebral Palsy, Kolkata, India, 1997.

23. Questions