FLipMouse - a Flexible Alternative Input Solution for People with Severe Motor Restrictions Benjamin Aigner, MSc., Veronika David, MSc., Martin Deinhofer, MSc., Dipl.-Ing. Christoph Veigl Institute of Embedded Systems UAS Technikum Wien Höchstädtplatz 6 Vienna, Austria {aignerb, david, deinhofe, veigl}@technikum-wien.at ABSTRACTThe majority of people with disabilities worldwide cannot afford expensive Assistive Technology, or the tools available do not perfectly match their needs, resulting in no adequate support. In order to overcome these barriers, the low-cost, Do-It-Yourself alternative input device FLipMouse has been developed. With this input device, people with restricted motor capabilities of the upper limbs can access personal computers, smartphones or consumer electronic devices either by lips or finger movement. The FLipMouse is based on a zero-way joystick and a sip-and-puff sensor. Further- more, two external switches can be attached for the creation of additional input signals. An integrated universal infrared transceiver allows control of various consumer electronic de- vices without any additional hard- or software. Two operational modes of the FLipMouse as well as a graphical user interface for configuration provide high flexibility for individual settings according to the user’s needs. Using a standardized communication protocol, raw sensor data from the device can be transferred to desired software applications for further processing and analysis. Feasibility checks of the FLipMouse in different user scenarios (gaming, desktop control, smartphone control and playing a musical instrument) with people with different limited motor capabilities con- firmed a high user satisfaction, several of the test subjects continued to use the device on a daily basis. In a quantitative evaluation, the mouse cursor positioning efficiency was tested. The results indicate that the FLipMouse is an affordable, fully functional alternative input device, which offers a high degree of adaptability not provided by similar assistive products available on the market or described in related research. CCS Concepts •Social and professional topics ~ Assistive technologies •Human-centered computing~Keyboards • Human-centeredcomputing ~ Pointing devicesKeywords HCI, HID, Assistive Technologies, Mouth controlled mouse, Do-It-yourself, Independent living 1. INTRODUCTIONCurrently, more than one billion people live with some sort of disability. Nearly 200 million of them experience major difficulties in their daily life [18]. According to [18], the main barriers to adequate assistance and support can be concluded to: • Lack of adequate human resources• Lack of funding for Assistive Tools• Inadequate and unresponsive servicesAssistive Technology (AT) can significantly improve qualityof life and autonomy of people with disabilities. Information and Communication Technology and suitable assistive tools for accessibility open up a plethora of possibilities for participation in social networks, leisure activities and professional work. Two characteristics of modern ICT-based assistive tools are of vital importance: adaptability to the capabilities of the individual and the cost of the solution - as the majority of people with disabilities worldwide cannot afford expensive tools. In this work we introduce a low-cost, Do-It-yourself (DIY) alternative input device to access personal computers (PCs), smartphones or consumer electronic devices which we call the “Finger and Lip Mouse” (FLipMouse). The FLipMouse can be actuated via minimal forces applied to a zero-way joystick and features a sip/puff sensor as well as connectors for additional momentary switches. The zero-way joystick can either be controlled by lip movements or operated by low-force finger (or even toe-) movements. Furthermore, the device is equipped with an infrared receiver module and a high current infrared LED so that recording and replay of infrared commands of arbitrary IR-remote control units for consumer electronics is possible. Configuration commands and raw sensor data can be transferred from/to software applications using a standardized communication protocol. Thus, the FLipMouse tool can be configured for many use cases, including: • Mouse emulation• Keyboard emulation• Joystick emulation• Consumer electronics remote control• Musical instrument.Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. DSAI 2016, December 01 - 03, 2016, Vila Real, Portugal Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-4748-8/16/12 $15.00 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3019943.3019948 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion25
