Page 144 - Handbook of Electronic Assistive Technology

132 HANDBOOK OF ELECTRONIC ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

Mouse Pointer Control With Speech

Digital Assistants
25
Modern computer tablet operating systems offer ‘digital assistants’ such as Siri (MacOS
27
and iOS ), Cortana (Windows) and Google Now (Android and Chromebook), which
26
can recognise spoken commands. This can reduce the need to use the mouse to start and
navigate between different programs and apps. The systems can be used to, for example,
start programs, find information on the device, interact with the digital calendar and play
music, but they do not provide complete control over the machine using speech.

Speech Recognition
28
29
The Windows built-in speech recognition and Dragon NaturallySpeaking, for Windows
and MacOS, can start, close and switch between programs, and voice commands can also
be used to, for example, control the text cursor for editing text in a word processor and to
access the menus.
Direct speech control over the mouse pointer is also possible by giving the ‘Mousegrid’
command. Mousegrid displays a transparent grid with nine numbered cells over the
screen and the user moves the mouse pointer to that cell by speaking the relevant num-
ber. Another numbered grid then appears within the selected window, and the user again
selects a cell by voice. This process is repeated until the mouse pointer is located over the
required item on the screen.

Eye-Gaze Access

Eye-gaze technology enables a user to control the mouse pointer or make selections from a
device by looking at a key or icon on screen. Eye-gaze may be suitable for users with significant
physical disabilities who cannot access or have difficulty accessing keyboards, touchscreens or
traditional pointing devices such as mouse, keyboard or trackball. Eye-gaze access systems are
used by people with, for example, spinal injury, ALS/motor neuron disease, RETT syndrome
or quadriplegic cerebral palsy (Caltenco et al., 2012; Caligari et al., 2013; Borgestig et al., 2016).
Eye-gaze can be faster than other methods of access, such as direct selection with a
joystick, or indirect methods, such as switches and scanning (Curry et al., 2007), because
most users can direct their gaze around a screen very rapidly. However, in a 2017 review of
access interfaces, Koester and Arthanat found very little published data on text entry rates
by users of eye gaze (Koester and Arthanat, 2017).
Eye-gaze involves lower levels of physical activity than other access methods. Most
human beings are experts at directing their gaze to objects within the environment, but

25 Use Siri on your Mac: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206993.
26 Siri on iOS: https://www.apple.com/uk/ios/siri/.
27 Cortana: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/cortana.
28 Windows Speech Recognition commands: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12427/
windows-speech-recognition-commands.
29 Dragon NaturallySpeaking: https://www.nuance.com/.