Camera-based mouse-replacement systems allow people with motor impairments to control the mouse pointer with head movements if they are unable to use their hands. To address the difficulties of accidental clicking and usable simulation of a real computer mouse, we developed Click Control, a tool to augment the functionality of these systems. When a user attempts to click, Click Control displays a form that allows him or her to cancel the click if it was accidental, or send different types of clicks with an easy-to-use gesture interface. Initial studies of a prototype with users with mo tor impairments showed that Click Control improved their mouse control experiences.

The graphical user interfaces of popular software are often inaccessible to people with severe motion impairments, who cannot use the traditional keyboard and mouse, and require an alternative input device. Reaching for buttons and selecting menu items, in particular, can be difficult for nonverbal individuals with quadriplegia, who control the mousepointer with head motion via a mouse-replacement system. This paper proposes interaction techniques that can be used with mouse-replacement systems and enable the creation of accessible graphical user interfaces. To illustrate these techniques, the paper presents an image editing application, named Camera Canvas, that uses a sliding toolbar as its universal menu controller. The parameters of the toolbar automatically adapt to the movement abilities of the specific user. Individuals with and without disabilities and of a variety of ages were observed using Camera Canvas. It was found that the developed techniques worked across many different movement abilities and experience levels. Then, it was investigated how such techniques could be used to ''retrofit'' existing Windows applications with new graphical user interfaces. A tool called Menu Controller was created that can automatically re-render the menus of some existing applications into adaptive sliding toolbars. Menu Controller enables users of mouse-replacement systems to select menu entries that were otherwise inaccessible to them.

Menu Controller was developed to make existing software more accessible for people with severe motor impairments, especially individuals who use mouse-replacement input systems. Windows applications have menus that are difficult to access by users with limited muscle control, due to the size and placement of the menu entries. The goal of Menu Controller is to take these entries and generate customizable user interfaces that can be catered to the individual user. Menu Controller accomplishes this by harvesting existing menu items without needing to change any existing code in these applications and then by displaying them to the user in an external toolbar that is more easily accessible to people with impairments. The initial challenge in developing Menu Controller was to find a method for harvesting and re-displaying menu items by using the Windows API. The rest of the work involved exploring an appropriate way for displaying the harvested menu entries. We ultimately chose an approach based on a two-level sliding toolbar. Experiments with a user with severe motor impairments, who used the Camera Mouse as a mouse-replacement input system, showed that this approach was indeed promising. The experiments also exposed areas that need further research and development. We suggest that Menu Controller provides a valuable contribution towards making everyday software more accessible to people with disabilities.