A challenge thrown to Microsoft by an athlete suffering from major disability has resulted in a tool that helped him and will now be included in Windows 10 on its next update.
In 2014, US footballer Steve Gleason was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a severe disability that restricted him to a wheelchair and deprived him of almost all movement except his eyes. He shared his challenge with Microsoft and they made it a task at one of their internal hackathons. The team led by Harish Kulkarni, Principal Software Development Engineer in Microsoft Research, came up with an EyeGaze wheelchair. The chair was instrumented in such a way that he could issue commands and even control a PC screen by moving his eyes.
CEO Satya Nadella came across this innovation in a recent review and mandated that the solution should help many more physically challenged people. So the next update of Windows 10 will include a tool called Eye Control, that responds to the user’s eye movement. When a compatible eye tracker, like the Tobii 4C used by gamers, is attached, it changes access options so that the eye movement can replace a physical mouse and keyboard.
Eye Control is now in its beta state but people interested in early testing and providing feedback can sign up to be a Windows Insider.
—IndiaTechOnline
