Abstract:

Children with severe physical impairments or, more specifically, with the locked-in syndrome have few ways to communicate independently. One of the most important aids for those people is the eye gaze tracker, a machine by which the subject can operate on a PC using her/his eye gaze only. For the most part, no other body movement is required to interact with the PC.

This kind of aids may be helpful to overcome physical impairments, but a good setup is needed. Operating and setting are two different processes: the first one mainly involves the user, the second strongly involves the presence of caregivers. User and caregivers form an imbricated system that we assume includes the eye gaze tracker aid.

Eye gaze tracker systems for children with severe physical impairments are not a frequent subject of study when analysed by a pedagogical approach. From this point of view, we are interested in evaluating how the eye gaze tracker supports children’s personal development and integration and how imbrication keeps in focus when operating with eye gaze trackers with children.

We carried out a systematic review to describe the state of the art of research about this topic. Results show some categories of interest we grouped in four largest focused ones: environment – children – parents – teachers.

Based on this scheme, we have conducted four cases study to explore both the effectiveness of eye tracker aid in children development and impact on their environment -one of them has been conducted in a controlled environment context-.

Results show all the subjects included within the caregiver’s categories express satisfaction about using the aid to support children’s development and inclusion. These results confirm systematic review outcomes.

Keywords:

Special needs, Assistive Technologies and Accessible Resources, Eye Gaze Tracker Systems, Locked in.