Within a few years, some 2 million severely handicapped people in Europe could communicate with each other over the global Internet using a special eye-movement control to run a personal computer.
A small French team of researchers Thursday showed the latest prototype of an Apple Macintosh computer that reacts to the subtle movements of the eye.This system, which follows a clinical test with 30 people in France to evaluate a word processor commanded by eye movement, opens the world of multimedia to the handicapped and will allow them to entertain themselves with electronic books, compact discs or computer games.
"Severely handicapped people are mainly young people in the 15 to 31 years category who have had a road accident. They have not always been handicapped, they still have all their intellectual facilities and they have a very long life expectancy," said Bernard de Groc of social researchers Delta 7.
Dr. Philippe Thoumie, who coordinated clinical tests in three hospitals in France this year, said that of the 30 people who had tried to use it, 22 had managed to do so with success.