Life with a disability is hard and can be really alienating. BlinkMouse is a real game-changer here. It’s an application that can help fully-paralysed people communicate with the world. Right now, their only option is to do that by blinking.
“Such persons are usually confined to their beds; you don’t meet them outside, so to the average person it seems there are very few of them. I believe that even if only a few people use my application, it was still worth creating,” said the creator of the application, Joanna Marnik, Ph. D. BlinkMouse was developed at Rzeszów University of Technology in the Department of Computer and Control Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Ready to hear more? BlinkMouse is a great replacement for a computer mouse. As it responds to blinking, it allows the disabled person to use the computer as usual. How great is that?
All you need is a webcam set in front of your face. The on-screen mouse looks like a regular mouse cursor. The application catches the eye movement and translates it into the cursor’s. You are no longer limited, the cursor can move in all basic directions, stop, select and activate. The application is also equipped with an on-screen keyboard, so you fully communicate with others.
Marnik’s application was entered into the ninth edition of “Soczewki Focusa 2017” poll. Users voted for groundbreaking scientific and technological enterprises in three categories: technical innovation, medical innovation and IT innovation. BlinkMouse came in second, just after a smart legal information system!
Marnik was very pleased with the announcement since it’s a huge chance for the application to reach a wider audience and bring in more users. It also shows that the Rzeszów University of Technology is a socially responsible institution, which is something that could prove very beneficial in the future. Marnik is already planning more products for disabled people.
The best thing is that the basic version of BlinkMouse is free and can be downloaded from the Rzeszów University of Technology’s website. There is also a more customisable version available from the Association for Children with Developmental Dysfunction “Bruno” under a license agreement with the university.
Hopefully, more and more people will hear about BlinkMouse, and it’ll soon be available to people all around the world!
