Evaluation of tooth-click triggering and speech recognition in assistive technology for computer access.
BACKGROUND
Computer access can play an important role in employment and leisure activities following spinal cord injury. The authors' prior work has shown that a tooth-click detecting device, when paired with an optical head mouse, may be used by people with tetraplegia for controlling cursor movement and mouse button clicks.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the efficacy of tooth clicks to speech recognition and that of an optical head mouse to a gyrometer head mouse for cursor and mouse button control of a computer.


METHODS
Six able-bodied and 3 tetraplegic subjects used the devices listed above to produce cursor movements and mouse clicks in response to a series of prompts displayed on a computer. The time taken to move to and click on each target was recorded.


RESULTS
The use of tooth clicks in combination with either an optical head mouse or a gyrometer head mouse can provide hands-free cursor movement and mouse button control at a speed of up to 22% of that of a standard mouse. Tooth clicks were significantly faster at generating mouse button clicks than speech recognition when paired with either type of head mouse device.


CONCLUSIONS
Tooth-click detection performed better than speech recognition when paired with both the optical head mouse and the gyrometer head mouse. Such a system may improve computer access for people with tetraplegia.
Simpson
Tyler
T
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Gauthier
Michel
M
Prochazka
Arthur
A
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D019416:Head Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011782:Quadriplegia / Q000534:rehabilitation; D013060:Speech; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface