People with diseases such as Parkinson's have a hard time communicating.
This text editor, when loaded in a browser and paired with an accessible keyboard, will allow a disabled person to type. My grandfather can't speak due to Parkinson's, and though he gets occasional hand tremors he can control his hand just enough to interface with a keyboard. This IDE is a solution to that; with an autocorrect algorithm, he can type the gist of a word and it will guess his intention.
To do list:
- Therapist or loved one should be able to input their own dictionary of words for the patient's common mistakes. In the algorithm, entries adjacent to this list will be prioritized.
- Incorporate merriam webster wordlist into dictionary of known words
- AI word completion implementation?
- Remove delay in presenting words on screen
- Remove the need for space after autocorrect. Thus, the algorithm needs to iteratively check with each Keyup.
- Add newline and expand text box
- Make custom keyboard with vibration-based haptic feedback and guardrails on each large key. Currently we're using off-shelf hardware: https://logickeyboard.com/shop/largeprint-black-on-3254p.html
There are solutions out there (https://www.lightkey.io/people-with-disabilities-feature), but they're all behind a paywall and assume nearly perfect typing. We want to open source it, and make it easily customizable to each patient.
The specific problem we're solving:
- Hand tremors cause adjacent keys to be hit. Our algorithm is designed with these specific errors in mind.
- Custom dictionary input to the application to each patient
- Repetitive key presses when patient cannot control their hand pressure or lift up fast enough
- Relieving the grammatical burden from the patient by predicting where a space or newline is necessary
- Looking ahead: custom disability focused bluetooth keyboard with haptic feedback