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.
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.