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Category: Project

Description: Eye-gaze technology (EGT) refers to hardware and software that allows users to control a computer using the movement and rest of their gaze. Whilst the technology has potential to support individuals with a broad range of congenital and acquired disabilities (including cerebral palsy, motor neuron disease, spinal cord injury) evidence to support clinical decision-making around whether the technology is appropriate is of varying quality. This can leave clinicians reliant on the information and feedback provided by EGT systems to make decisions. Feedback provided by the devices typically includes information on calibration accuracy, the position of the user and some discrete aspects of performance such as accuracy of targeting. However, in some cases, software that purports to measure or even improve performance with the technology is offered by EGT manufacturers. Such software is often aimed at children and tends to frame acquiring competence with EGT as a series of discrete skills arranged in a presumed continuum or “learning curve”. Often these will include skills from different areas including vision (fixation, gaze switching), cognitive ability (cause and effect understanding) and language skills (choice-making, matching). Some software will provide a score or level for such skills, in addition to recommendations for further practice or progressing through the continuum of skills. In most cases, feedback and scores are calculated using metrics or algorithms that are not made clear to the user or to professionals. Additionally, feedback focuses on framing challenges with eye-gaze as “technical” issues, rather than supporting robust clinical decision-making. This project seeks to understand how the information provided by eye-gaze systems is received and interpreted by professionals. Through so doing, the research team will explore how contributions from the field of vision and eye movement science can inform the design of future eye-gaze technology interfaces and feedback methods. The research questions to be addressed are: 1. What information provided by EGT systems do clinicians find helpful and how do they understand and interpret that information? 2. How would information from the field of vision and eye movement research best be presented to professionals to support clinical reasoning and discussion with users and families?