A Bangla Predictive Keyboard For People With NeuroMotor

A Bangla Predictive Keyboard For People With Neuro-Motor Disorders Presented By Animesh Mukherjee Research Scholar Department of Computer Science and Engineering IIT Kharagpur

The Reality • Suppose you are asked to use a computer which has The Mouse Unplugged The Keyboard Unplugged

The Divide • Nevertheless there is a big population in India (14. 56 million approx) that experiences such a difficulty every day • These are people suffering from neuro-motor disorders • For them the presence or the absence of a mouse or a keyboard is always synonymous to its absence

Neuro-Motor Disorder – What is it ? Serves to Modify the Movements Produces Nerve Cells that Causes Movements of the Body Parts • These disorders are caused by ØFaulty development of motor areas in the brain, or, ØTotal damage of these motor areas.

Consequences … • Severe difficulty with fine motor tasks (like writing, stitching, using computer peripherals, and various other such tasks. ) • Severe difficulty with any kind of communication. • In a nutshell, v. Access to the computers is almost a “dream come true” v. The presence/absence of the peripherals are irrelevant for them.

Can Computers Help • Certainly computers can help this population by being Ø An easy medium of communication (which they find very difficult) Ø An intelligent companion by understanding the needs and thereby reducing the communication efforts

The Impetus: Something Indian!! • Mainly the Indian scenario ØPresent systems are tuned to foreign sociocultural context ØAll of them are imported – no local support ØCostly for an average Indian user ( E Z Keys $1400, Gyro-Head. Mouse - $1495, Camera. Mouse. TM - $695 + costly video camera) ØLack of Adaptation in existing systems

The Prelims: Special Access Mechanisms • Hardware Component – Depending upon the degree of their motor control the disabled people can use either one or at most two switches (specially designed for them) in order to access the computer. Courtesy IICP, Kolkata

Special Access Mechanisms (contd…) • Software Component ØScanning Mechanisms – Guided / periodic focusing and defocusing of screen elements. ØShift of focus – Shift operation (needs one switch) ØSelection of a particular screen element – Register operation (needs another switch)

Methods of Scanning Co-ordinate Scan Cartesian Polar Matrix Scan (3 D, 2 D, 1 D)

Sulekh. A: A Demo

Statistics • Sulekh. A uses Ø Bigram Prediction Strategy for Word Level v. The training corpus at present contains approximately 1 million words and 0. 12 million distinct bi-grams. v. The format of the corpus is shown below, <frequency bigram 1 bigram 2> Ø Unigram Prediction Strategy for Character Level v. The training corpus at present contains approximately 1. 3 million words and 0. 05 million distinct unigrams. v. The format of the corpus is shown below, <frequency unigram>

The Strategies Word Level Character Level

Shradha Writes with Sulekh. A

Assessments: Sulekh. A Ø Typing rate (number of characters typed per minute) was measured Ø Measurements were taken when the prediction was not in use and also when in use Typing Rate of Barsha Typing Rate of Shradha

Usability 5 – Excellent, 4 – Good, 3 – Average, 2 – Difficult, 1 – Very Difficult

References • • • • [1] Hufschmidt-Schneider M. , Kuhme Thomas and Malinowski U. , Adaptive User Interfaces, Principles and Practice. [2] Ahmed Seffah and Homa Javahery, Multiple User Interfaces, Cross-Platform Applications and Context-Aware Interfaces. [3] http: //www-csli. stanford. edu/cll/aui. html [4] http: //www. words-plus. com [5] http: //www. advancedperipheral. com [6] http: //www. logitech. com [7] http: //cameramouse. com [8] http: //www. cirque. com [9] http: //orin. com/index. htm [10] http: //www. quadjoy. com [11] http: //www. censusindia. net/disability_mapgallery. html [12] http: //www. webhealthcentre. com/general/cp_india. asp [13] Kaul Sudha and Warrick A. , Their Manner of Speaking, Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, Kolkata, India, 1997.

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