ABSTRACT

Many individuals with complex communication needs and severe motor impairments are unable to control technologies through conventional means and require alternative access techniques to achieve accurate and efficient access. With current alternative access techniques, individuals with severe motor impairments are limited in that they can only use one access technique at a time. The purpose of this project was to test proof of concept of a new multimodal access technique which integrated eye gaze and single switch scanning selection techniques. The aims were to investigate the learning patterns of two adults with severe cerebral palsy when first introduced to the multimodal access technique and then to compare the accuracy and efficiency of multimodal to single-modality access when selecting targets on an AAC visual scene display. The participants learned to use the multimodal access technique; they demonstrated improvements in their accuracy of selection across sessions and attained at least 80% accuracy within 3-15 training sessions. Both participants achieved similar accuracy with multimodal access compared to single-modality, but took longer to select targets with multimodal access compared to single-modality. The potential utility of multimodal access is explored as well as important avenues for future research.

摘要

许多具有复杂通信需求和严重运动障碍的个人无法通过传统方式控制技术，需要替代访问技术来实现准确和高效的访问。使用当前的替代接入技术，患有严重运动障碍的个人受到限制，因为他们一次只能使用一种接入技术。该项目的目的是测试一种新的多模式访问技术的概念验证，该技术集成了眼睛凝视和单开关扫描选择技术。目的是调查两名患有严重脑瘫的成年人在首次接触多模态访问技术时的学习模式，然后比较在 AAC 视觉场景显示上选择目标时多模态与单模态访问的准确性和效率。参与者学习使用多模式接入技术；他们在各个课程中展示了选择准确性的提高，并在 3-15 个培训课程中达到了至少 80% 的准确率。与单模态相比，两名参与者通过多模态访问获得了相似的准确性，但与单模态相比，通过多模态访问选择目标所需的时间更长。探讨了多式联运的潜在效用以及未来研究的重要途径。