| Abstract: | Individuals with a muscular degenerative disease such as Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS, often have trouble maintaining their lifestyle as their condition progresses. Assistive devices, such as eye trackers, allow these individuals to stay connected with the world as they always have. These technological aids have historically been expensive and hard to maintain because every patient has a unique condition that requires different services. Fortunately, these technologies are becoming more accessible, but the issue is that they are largely behind in terms of software and support. This lack of maintenance causes individuals with ALS to have slow software that can only run on older versions of their operating systems. Our objective is to create a modern eye-tracking keyboard software that solves many issues current individual with ALS face today. Our software will be portable across operating systems and includes many accessibility features while being easy and intuitive to use. Our software also uses a unique keyboard layout that aims to reduce eye strain and increase typing speed. Paired with low-cost consumer eye trackers, we hope to create an adequate replacement for costly medical devices that is both more user-friendly and more feature-rich. |