Today I read a paper titled “Fast and flexible selection with a single switch”
The abstract is:
Selection methods that require only a single-switch input, such as a button click or blink, are potentially useful for individuals with motor impairments, mobile technology users, and individuals wishing to transmit information securely.
We present a single-switch selection method, “Nomon,” that is general and efficient.
Existing single-switch selection methods require selectable options to be arranged in ways that limit potential applications.
By contrast, traditional operating systems, web browsers, and free-form applications (such as drawing) place options at arbitrary points on the screen.
Nomon, however, has the flexibility to select any point on a screen.
Nomon adapts automatically to an individual’s clicking ability; it allows a person who clicks precisely to make a selection quickly and allows a person who clicks imprecisely more time to make a selection without error.
Nomon reaps gains in information rate by allowing the specification of beliefs (priors) about option selection probabilities and by avoiding tree-based selection schemes in favor of direct (posterior) inference.
We have developed both a Nomon-based writing application and a drawing application.
To evaluate Nomon’s performance, we compared the writing application with a popular existing method for single-switch writing (row-column scanning).
Novice users wrote 35% faster with the Nomon interface than with the scanning interface.
An experienced user (author TB, with > 10 hours practice) wrote at speeds of 9.3 words per minute with Nomon, using 1.2 clicks per character and making no errors in the final text.