Publication: IBM Systems Journal
Publication Date: 01-SEP-05
Format: Online - approximately 4619 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Levine, James L. ; Schappert, Michael A.
Company: ars International Business Machines Corp.; International Business Machines Corp.
Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
The project we describe here began soon after we attended Information Technology for Seniors, a workshop organized by the IBM Academy of Technology in 2002. The IBM Academy of Technology is a body of technical experts whose mission is to advise the company executives on technical issues and to facilitate communication among the various technical groups within IBM.
At the workshop we learned that physical problems related to aging frequently include loss of visual acuity, reduced hearing, and hand tremor, all of which can impede computer access. We also learned that, whereas products are commercially available for people with vision and hearing problems, little is available to assist those with hand tremor. We then began a modest program to investigate whether digital filtering of the mouse data stream could provide a solution to this problem. Our intention was not to do research on the symptoms of hand tremor, but rather to empirically develop assistive equipment that enables a substantial fraction of those with hand tremor to use a computer mouse.
Through a joint study agreement, we joined forces with the assistive technology group led by Dr. Cathy Bodine at the University of Colorado Health Science Center. (1) This group, which works routinely with people having a variety of mobility and perceptual problems, helped us conduct a number of preliminary tests. These tests, in which we used special-purpose DOS-based test programs with several types of filters, indicated that filtering could be helpful and encouraged us to find a method that would work for any application with a mouse-driven interface. The tests also uncovered several problems that affect the selection of tremor-smoothing technology and its implementation. The high degree of temporal variability exhibited by many people with tremor and their limited computer literacy were of particular concern. This combination made it difficult to provide an optimal solution for all individuals, and eventually led us to a hardware implementation with very simple controls that was effective for most people with hand tremor.
Many people develop some form of tremor, an involuntary shaking of a body part. When it affects a person's hands, tremor can interfere with many of the activities of daily living that require steady hands, such as the use of a computer mouse or other pointing device. Tremor can be caused by an injury, by an illness such as Parkinson's disease, by hereditary factors, and by aging. When caused by hereditary factors or by aging, it is referred to as essential tremor (ET), and it affects perhaps 15 to 20 percent of people over the age of 65. (2) Frequencies of tremor movements typically range between 4 and 12 Hz (cycles per second). (3) When tremor is associated with an illness or injury, it is often more severe than ET and may be accompanied by a loss of overall control of the hand. In this case, the use of a mouse-driven interface is very problematical. If the level of hand tremor is moderate, which is the case for at least a subset of people with illness-related hand tremor, the problem can be alleviated by applying a suitable digital filter to the data stream from a standard mouse. Such a solution would be effective for the large number of older people who nowadays use computers routinely for activities such as e-mail, word processing, and browsing a library catalog.
Some excellent work has been done in the area of tremor filters, including development of narrow-band rejection filters (4) and adaptive finite impulse response filters. (5) In addition, some very interesting work has been done using haptic (force generating) mice to implement "gravity wells" around selected regions of the screen representing buttons. (6) However, the filters or gravity wells were built into programs designed to optimize or test the filters, or to use them for a specific purpose such as micro-surgery. It is extremely difficult and costly to do this for general-purpose programs, such as Internet browsers, word processors, and image processors. Moreover, modifying these programs to track changes in, say, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or word-processor formats, would be a major challenge. However, this can be avoided. For Microsoft Windows* *-based systems, mouse input is handled by the operating system, which, via a complex set of device drivers, positions the cursor and passes "mouse events"...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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