Simulation of Motor Impairment in Head-Controlled Pointer Fitts' Law Task

Abstract

Participants with motor impairments may not always be available for research or software development testing. To address this, we propose simulation of users with motor impairments interacting with a head-controlled mouse pointer system. Simulation can be used as a stand-in for research participants in preliminary experiments and can serve to raise awareness about ability-based interactions to a wider software development population. We evaluated our prototype system using a Fitts' Law experiment and report on the measured communication rate of our system compared to users without motor impairments and with a previously reported participant with motor impairments.