Developing a Scanning Assistive Input Device for the Severely Disabled to Operate the Computers and Mobile Devices

Abstract

The severely disabled such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cerebral palsy often have different states and varying degrees of disease, and then the operation way of the assistive devices for the severely disabled to operate the computers and mobile devices is quite different. Thus, to develop a suitable assistive input device for severely disabled in operating computers and mobile devices is very important. In this study, a scanning assistive input device (SAID) is developed for severely disabled. To meet the user’s physical condition, an assistive input switch with different assistive input interfaces is developed to ease severely disabled in inputting commands. To help severely disabled in operating the computers or mobile devices, the SAID control box is designed to recognize and execute the input commands. To ease the operation of SAID, the function indicator lights prompt is applied as the input interfaces. The experimental results showed that the proposed SAID can effectively help severely disabled in operating computers or mobile devices. Thus, the proposed approach can help severely disabled in daily life.