How does the dedicated software PLEIA provide computer access assessment for people with physical disabilities?

Abstract

Computer tools allow to ease the daily life of everyone, especially for people with disabilities. The optimal choice of pointing interfaces or types of settings can be difficult to achieve. Although there exist a few tests to compare and evaluate the performance of computer access technology (CAT), most of them only provide results as qualitative terms. Besides, the current choice is based mainly on clinical observations or non-standardized tests. To objectify the recommendations in CAT, support funding for people with disabilities and measure the functional repercussions of a therapeutic action, it is necessary to carry out comparative tests with measurable criteria. This paper presents the development of a personalized, free, and dedicated evaluation platform of pointing interfaces and assistances. The quantitative evaluation process is described in detail, such as the configuration of different exercises with settable parameters that permits to build a customized evaluation process with increased difficulties, the definition of performance indicators and the statistical analysis methods for quantified comparative tests. Finally, we present the assessment results of four people with different disabilities using multiple pointing interfaces, which verify the effectivity of this evaluation platform with the help of occupational therapists.