With some funding from the state, we got Edda her own eye gaze tablet. One of the ways that Rett girls have been able to access software is through using their eyes. Tobii has made a system with cameras that can capture eye movement and use it in place of a mouse. Many years ago (October 2011 according to the blog), we did a month-long trial where tried a system made by the same company, but it was big, bulky and $18,000. And it was clear to me that it was not an easy-peasy thing for Edda to do. So we let that go.
Now, less than 4 years later, we have this:
A much more reasonable $3400, which the state chipped in $2000 and then we paid for the balance and now we have a tablet with an eye-gaze bar on the bottom. For that low, low price, we didn’t get any software and we didn’t get any tech support.
It’s going to take a while to get it up and running. Jeremy is all excited to figure out the software with the school system. We are hoping that Edda’ll be able to choose her own videos. What a big step that would be – to look at all the videos she loves and pick the one she wants to watch instead of us picking for her. Or maybe’ll she’ll be able to play a simple game so that she could actually direct something! The little things I get excited about….