A new announcement made by Microsoft reveals that they are going to add eye tracking support in Windows 10. This new feature will extend the existing accessibility options of the OS.
For details, you can watch the following video:
The company explained that they were contacted by former NFL player Sreve Gleason back in 2014, who was affacted by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, which results in difficulties in muscle movements. However, eyes are one of the organs that remain unaffected.
Microsoft started working on the feature and managed to build the EyeGaze wheelchair, which can be controlled by eye movement. Realizing that it can be helpful to other ALS patients, they decided to build support for eye tracking in Windows 10.
Thanks to this change, the user can control the OS using only his eye movements. It is possible to manage this way:
- an onscreen mouse,
- a keyboard,
- and text-to-speech related features.
The new accessibility feature is called "Eye Control" and requires an external peripheral device, Tobii 4C eye tracker. Microsoft is planning to add support for more devices soon.
Eye Control is in an early development strage now. Interested users can test it by joining the Windows Insider Program. Microsoft has stated that the feature is in stages of "early testing", so probably it won't be included in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which is expected to be released this fall.
Source: via.
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