Usability study of a brain-computer interface applied to people with cerebral palsy

Abstract

People with motors and communication disorders have serious problems to interact with computers and promoting this interaction is an open research field. In this work, a brain-computer interface, based on the Emotiv Epoc™, is used to analyze the computer interaction to people with cerebral palsy. To this end a software was developed to promote and evaluate the user experience using the Emotiv. Through the software is possible to build words and phrases using the signals coming from the brain-computer interface. A usability evaluation was carried out with the participation of special education specialists and a user with cerebral palsy. Quantitative and qualitative assessments show promising results regarding to the use of this approach as an alternative and augmentative communication approach. This is a pioneer work in our state.