マウスポインタ操作を代替するシングルスイッチスキャン法の操作性評価

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Persons with severe motor disabilities such as ALS patients and patients with cerebral palsy use personal computers (PC) as a tool for communication and social participation. They usually operate PCs with a help of an automatic scanning software together with a single switch. Automatic scanning-based operation of mouse pointer, however, seems difficult for them, because it requires precise input operation in a short period of time. Consequently, erroneous operation occurs frequently, resulting in the increase in operation time, physical fatigue and mental stresses. To alleviate these, the most effective scanning method has to be selected for each individual patient under a certain criterion of usability. As candidates of such usability criteria, total time of operation and the number of times of operation seem suitable. Using these evaluations, we compared usability of typical scanning methods such as section search method, Cartesian-cursor method and their combination, "hybrid method", by means of computer simulation. Introduction of a single error model of operation enabled us to compare the three methods on an equal basis. Through experiments, we found that the minimum time of operation existed for each method, providing us with a clue to theoretical comparison of scanning methods.
2007-11-28