Talking to the ceiling: an interface for bed-ridden manually impaired users

Abstract

Even though computer interfaces for handicapped and elderly people have already been investigated for quite some time, little attention has been paid to the special access problems of bed-ridden people. In this video and paper, we present a human-computer interface that enables a person who is almost completely paralyzed and on an artificial respirator to write literary texts on his own again. Many of the observations give clues for the design of interfaces for bed-ridden manually impaired users in general.