Development of a computer assistive input device through a commercial numerical keyboard by position coding technology for people with disabilities

Purpose. This study proposes a novel computer pointing device that uses a commercial numerical keyboard as the input device of the device to help people with disabilities move a cursor to a target quickly, easily and accurately. Method. The proposed device adopts a Screen-Partitioning and Coding method and adopts an Auxiliary-Window-Screen program design that provides users with a visual operating environment. Result. Three people with disabilities tested the device. In an experiment user-performance was measured and compared with that using mousekeys developed by Microsoft and the two-grade method proposed by Shih. Experimental results reveal that this method enables people with disabilities to operate computer. Conclusions. In summary, a novel method is applied to help people with disabilities move a cursor to a target. The proposed device uses a commercial pointing device as the input device, providing users with an inexpensive, flexible and easily maintained computer pointing device. Furthermore, the proposed device adopts the Auxiliary-Window-Screen design to provide the users with a visual operating environment. Experimental results show that the proposed device is superior to those of the previous studies.