Electronic Gizmos Help Disabled : Technology: Devices offer new world of communication to people locked in their bodies, with no other way to express themselves.

By SALLY SQUIRES

April 15, 1992 12 AM PT

THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The 7-year-old Louisiana boy was locked inside his body.

Unable to talk and virtually unable to control any of his limbs because of severe cerebral palsy, he could do little to communicate. His teachers at the residential state school in Pineville, La., noticed, however, that he could signal with his eyes: up for yes, down for no.

“We thought he had quite a lot of intelligence,” said principal Emmett Albright. “And now a computer has proven that he does. He’s done wonders with it.”

The computer is Eyegaze, one of the new generation of technologically advanced products to aid disabled individuals. It is also one of the several hundred such devices that were entered into a competition sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, the National Science Foundation and MCI to foster the development of more products for the disabled. The 30 winning devices were recently on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

Eyegaze uses an infrared light and video camera mounted beneath a standard personal computer. The infrared light locks onto the cornea in the user’s eye and can pinpoint within a tenth of an inch where the eyes are gazing on the computer screen so that the user can move his eyes to direct the computer to perform tasks.

Sitting in his wheelchair in front of a special computer screen, the 7-year-old boy uses his limited eye movement to “talk” to his teachers via a voice synthesizer run by the computer. By shifting his gaze, he can turn on lights, flip on his favorite television program or play a computer game.

Like many of the growing number of devices designed for the disabled, Eyegaze, which is manufactured by LC Technologies Inc. of Fairfax, Va., and costs $25,000 for the complete system, uses an array of standard computer equipment assembled in a new way.

“A lot of this technology is out there that we don’t even know about,” said Edward V. Roberts, president of the World Institute on Disability in Oakland. “These devices . . . can really make a difference in people’s lives,” said Roberts, who was paralyzed from the neck down after suffering polio in the 1950s.

“They increase independence and change how disabled persons view themselves. You see a whole new person emerge.”

The advantage of computer technology is that it opens a world of communication, education and potential employment to those who are blind, hearing impaired or have no use of their limbs.

Affordability remains a thorny question for many of the new computer-assisted devices.

“I would love one of these” computers, said Roberts, who is confined to a wheelchair during the day and spends most nights in an iron lung. “But some of the software alone costs $10,000, and I can’t afford it.”

Impressive strides are being made in designing this new technology, he said. “But how do we get it to people who can’t afford to buy it for themselves? That is my biggest complaint.”

A key solution is to consider the needs of the disabled when products for the general public are on the drawing board, said Alan Hofmeister, director of the Center for Information Technology at Utah State University. That’s the time when low-cost design changes can be made, rather than modifying products after they have been manufactured.

The potential market will continue to grow, Hofmeister said, not just for the disabled but also for the increasing number of people who have varying degrees of hearing loss, vision impairment and other disabilities as they age. With the development of advanced computers that can do more complex tasks with fewer directions, the situation should improve, he said.

“We’ve only seen the start,” Hofmeister said. “We can do this much with simple building blocks. Who knows where we’ll go?”