Hannah Heads-up Diary Hannah is 27 years old and lives independently near Blackheath. Hannah has Cerebral Palsy which means she has difficulties in controlling her muscles and her own movements. Hannah uses a computer called TELUS to communicate and this is her story of using Head Mouse Technology.
First, we introduced Hannah to the Head Mouse technology and adjusted the basic sensitivity settings to allow Hannah to use and play the Head Mouse games using a point on her face as the main controller. The first Heads Up game - involved moving the cursor across the screen to clear all the balls.
The next level gets increasingly harder as the size of the balls become smaller and the screen is a lot denser with them. Hannah found these levels easy enough to manoeuvre around and got to grips with how the Head Mouse works.
For the next game the difficulty was increased with the introduction of mines throughout the screen which you had to avoid with the cursor, while clearing the other balls. At first this was a struggle but after some further practise, Hannah quickly got used to the Head Mouse and was able to complete the remainder of the games easily.
This introductory practise in the first few sessions allowed the sensitivity and positioning settings to be adjusted so they were best suited for Hannah and allowed best possible ease of use for Head Mouse.
Next we introduced the basic ‘on screen keyboard’ which often comes as standard on Laptop and Desktop computers. Hannah struggled to use this particular feature as she found it slow to use and there was no predictive text function that would make it faster and easier for Hannah to type words. Hannah is used to working with different keyboard arrangements with ‘TELUS’ – which suits her well.
We then tested and trialled some of the other virtual keyboards available online and found that the Dynamic Keyboard was best suited for Hannah. The Dynamic Keyboard allowed Hannah to clearly find the letter she needed and then select it using the head mouse. This keyboard has predictive text capability, which was great for Hannah as it was easier and quicker to use. The keyboard was also easily accessed by Hannah using the red arrows in the corner of the screen. Hannah also found that the colours and layout made constructing the words she wanted a lot more straightforward.
Having mastered the basics of Head Mouse and how it is used to navigate around and access the Dynamic Keyboard in the final weeks, Hannah was now able to use the computer for her own personal interests and searches.
Hannah can navigate around the programmes and files on the computer, open them, close them, and use them independent of support in ways that she could not before as well as type a search in Google. So she can now search for her favourite bands on YouTube with little or no help from a supporter.
Hannah commented that “at first it was hard, but then it got easier”. One of Hannah’s supporter’s, Nadia, commented that, “the Head Mouse Software with more practise and use could be very helpful as it is free and easily accessible compared with other versions of Eye Gaze and Head Mouse technology they have had the opportunity to use, The Heads Up package enables you to engage with this empowering technology in an easy step by step way. I have seen Hannah’s use of the computer get better and better with these tools to help her.”