[Usability Engineering]   Gaze-Typing Arabic Interface for Individuals with Severe Motor Disabilities
 
Project Team: Bushra Al-Kadhi, Itisam Al-Hazzaa, Arwa Al-Issa, Lujain Al-Tamimi, May Al-Humaimeedi
Supervisor: Dr. Areej Al-Wabil
Project Duration: Jan 2012 - Jan 2013
 
Communication is an essential part of daily life. Assistive technologies can provide alternative forms of communication for people with severe motor disabilities that can help them overcome the problem of verbal communication, and consequently improve their quality of life.

 
Motivated by this problem, this project aims to assist people with Severe Motor Disability by developing an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) iWriter system that is operating entirely by eye gaze. iWriter is an Arabic system that provides two communication methodologies: virtual keyboards and a set of assistive images that illustrate their basic needs. In order to accommodate a wider number of cases, iWriter considers two different designs of keyboards either standard or vertical keyboard based on the user's disability type. To track the eye, Tobii X120 eye tracker device is used along with our application which was developed using the Tobii Software Development Kit (SDK).

  Eye tracking Arabic keyboard                    Predefined phrases represented as images
 
Our submission titled "Optimizing Gaze Typing for People with Severe Motor Disabilities: The iWriter Arabic Interface" was accepted for presentation in the ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies in Boulder, Colorado ( http://www.sigaccess.org/assets12/ ). This publication was co-authored by Arwa Al-Issa, Itisam Hazzaa, May Al-Humaimeedi, Lujain Al-Tamimi, Bushra Al-Kadhi and Areej Al-Wabil.
 
Join us for a Dry-Run of this publication's presentation on Monday, Oct 15th, at 12pm. We welcome your feedback and tips you may have for our presentation in ACM's Assets conference in the USA. Moreover, you’ll get to see what our SKERG Research Group members are working on!
 
Publications
Gaze-Communication for Individuals with Severe Motor Disabilities: In proceedings of APCHI - The 10th Asia Pacific Conference in Computer Human Interaction in Matsue, Japan [August 2012].  
[ACM] Optimizing Gaze Typing for People with Severe Motor Disabilities: The iWriter Arabic Interface: PUBLISHED in the proceedings of the ACM Assets 2012 conference in Boulder Colorado [October 2012]. ACM
*Gaze-Typing with Adjustable Dwell Time: The iWriter Arabic Interface for People with Severe Motor Disabilities: *Best Paper Award in the 4th annual KSU Scientific Student Symposium, [April 2013]
Bushra Al-Kadhi, Itisam Al-Hazzaa, Arwa Al-Issa, Lujain Al-Tamimi, May Al-Humaimeedi (for publication in May 2013) Design and Development of Eyetyping AAC , Undergraduate Research Conference for Applied Computing, Dubai [May 2013]