Trackball text entry for people with motor impairments

  • Authors:
  • Jacob Wobbrock;Brad Myers

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We present a new gestural text entry method for trackballs. The method uses the mouse cursor and relies on crossing instead of pointing. A user writes in fluid Roman-like unistrokes by ""pulsing"" the trackball in desired letter patterns. We examine this method both theoretically using the Steering Law and empirically in two studies. Our studies show that able-bodied users who were unfamiliar with trackballs could write at about 10 wpm with