Eye Gesture Based Communication for People with Motor Disabilities in Developing Nations
Sharan Pai, Anish Bhardwaj · 2019
Current eye tracking systems for people with motor disabilities are expensive, restricted to only four eye movements, require constant re-calibration, assume literacy in English and offer no easy method to contact people during emergencies. Even though the above systems are flawed, they are crucial for the aforementioned individuals to communicate. Despite this, our surveys show that no such systems are in use for people in developing countries and there is a heavy dependence on simple yes or no answers. To overcome these obstacles we created E-ACE (Eye-based Alternative Communication Exchange) : A smartphone based system that allows the user to utilize nine eye movements rather than the traditional four. Our surveys show that many people with motor disabilities have difficulties in performing the conventional four eye movements. To counter this, E-ACE allows each user to create a personalized system which consists of their preferred four eye movements from a set of nine (four traditional, five new). To overcome the language barrier that many people face while using the current systems, E-ACE provides easy to understand pictures for a list of relevant English words and phrases which was curated from the doctors we surveyed. E-ACE also lets the user access an SOS Board that can call, message and alert the concerned people with just two eye movements. Thus, E-ACE offers a robust, portable and low-cost solution which solves the problems faced with current systems. Our Evaluations and User studies show that E-ACE has good user experience, is easily adopted by non-English speaking individuals, and is cost-effective, making it accessible to people in a developing nation.