Twenty Years of Eye Typing: Systems and Design Issues

1. Twenty Years of Eye Typing: Systems and Design Issues TampereUnit forComputerHumanInteraction Päivi Majaranta & Kari-Jouko Räihä 25 March 2002 ETRA2002

2. Contents • Introduction • Typing by gaze Focus Feedback Selection • Keyboard layout • Customization and context of use • Typing vs. communication • System level issues • Discussion 1

3. Introduction • Eye Typing means producing text by using the point of gaze • Needed by people with severe disabilities • Control of the eyes may be the only option • Need for a communication system is acute • Focus on producing text • But: considerations of communication strongly present, since most of the systems are designed for use ascommunication systems 2

4. Typing by gaze • A typical eye typing system has • an on-screen keyboard • an eye tracking deviceto record eye movements • a computerto analyze gaze behavior • To type by gaze the user • focuses on the letter s/he wants to type • gets feedback by the system (e.g. highlight) • selects the item in focus (e.g. by a switch) QuickGlance http://www.eyetechds.com 3

5. Focus • Move focus by looking at the wanted item • Mouse emulation • moving the cursor by moving eyes (& head) • Dwell time • continuous fixations on an item (< 1 s) • Shift focus by short gaze glances • eyes as switches • needed if difficulties with fixating EPCOS, Frietman and Kate 1978 Shein, 1997 4

6. Feedback • Currently focused item • Cues for dwell time duration • Successful selection Visual • highlighting, changing colors • moving, animated, shrinking cursors Auditory • beep, click • spoken (letters, words, sentences) Proper is feedback especially important for disabled who may have never controlled much anything EagleEyes, Gips and Olivieri 1993 ERICA, Lankford, ETRA2000 5

7. Selection • Focusing and selecting may be linked • May not be perceived as separate operations • Dwell time • Item is focused and subsequently selected • May be interrupted by looking away before the time runs out • Blinks, winks, wrinkles • Must be separated from natural blinks • Additional switches • Also, eyes as switches (with scanning) • Off-screen targets VisionKey, Khan et al. 1995 6

8. Delete This is the text f_ A to Z 6 most likely O I A words U R L Space Keyboard layout • QWERTY not always best • Alphabetic may be faster to learn • Most common letters may be grouped together • Items must be large enough  Not much space left for text and other items • Accuracy depends on eye tracking device, screen resolution, distance from the user The bigger the better up to ~4 degrees • Items can be grouped to selection menus • T9, probabilistic character layout EagleEyes, Gips & Olivieri 1996 Type-To-Talk, Hansen et al., 2001 7

9. Customization and context of use • The skills and needs of the users vary a lot • Customizable features • Dwell time duration • Keyboard layout • size, color, location, content, … • Cursor appearance and functioning • Sound (on/off, volume, earcons, speech) • Possibility to disengage eye-control • Integration to other applications • Control Windows/Macintosh • zooming, screen magnifiers, fish-eye views QuickGlance EyeCons, Rasmusson, CSUN99 8

10. Typing vs. communication • Eye typing is slow • Only one or a few words per minute • Hard to have a conversation! • Methods to speed up eye typing • Phrases for everyday usage • Sentence buffers “please give me” + “water” • Character & Word prediction • Dictionaries and predefined grammars • New methods, like Dasher  up to 10-20 wpm • Communicative icons • Not all can (learn to) read and write! LC Eyegaze, Chapman 1991 Salvucci, 1999 9

11. System level issues • Virtual keyboards and communication aids • No need to redo well-done work • Many features already implemented • “sticky keys”, word prediction, customization • environmental control, integrated speech • Portability • Possibility to attach a wheelchair • Size • Sensitivity to body movements • Changing lighting conditions EagleEyes, www.cs.bc.edu/~eagleeye VisionKey, http://www.eyecan.ca 10

12. Eye Communication Systems • BlinkWriter, Murphy et al., 1993, • EagleEyes, Gips et al., 1993, Boston College, MA • EPCOS & EYE-SISTANT, Frietman et al., 1984, TU-Delft, Holland • ERICA, Hutchinson et al., 1987, Univ. Virginia • EYECOM, Rosen and Durfee, 1987 • EYE-gaze, Tokorozawa, Japan • Eye-Switch Controlled Communication Aids, Kate et al., 1979, TU-Delft, Holland • EyeScan, Eulenberg et al., 1985 • EyeTyper, Friedman et al., 1981 • EyeWriter, Wiesspeiner et al., 1999, Graz, Austria • LC EyeGaze, Chapman et al., 1991, LC Technologies, Virginia • Quick Glance, Rasmusson et al., 1999 • SiVHa, Blanco et al., 1998, Univ. Navarra, Spain • Type-To-Talk, Hansen et al., 2001, IT-University Copenhagen, Denmark • Viserg Eye Mouse, Istance et al., 1993, Univ. Leicester, UK • VisionKey, Kahn et al., 1995, Ottawa Ontario, Canada • VISIOBOARD, EU/Telematics project, 2000 • … 11

13. Discussion • Further development still needed • Typing issues not been studied in detail • methods for editing text • selecting a chunk of text • scrolling text • fast undo methods • improving typing rate • interaction between virtual keyboard and text field • usefulness of various forms of feedback, ... • How to start up (re)calibration? • Eye typing provides a rich set of issues for study • from practical point of view: to develop more usable systems • from research point of view: to understand gaze communication task 12

14. Thank you Thank you for your attention! Questions? curly@cs.uta.fi http://www.cs.uta.fi/hci/gaze PS. From our web page you will find an updated list of eye typing systems, links to their homepages, extra info, etc. 13