A new concept of assistive virtual keyboards based on a systematic review of text entry optimization techniques

Abstract

Introduction: Due to the increasing popularization of computers and the internet expansion, Alternative and Augmentative Communication technologies have been employed to restore the ability to communicate of people with aphasia and tetraplegia. Virtual keyboards are one of the most primitive mechanisms for alternatively entering text and play a very important role in accomplishing this task. However, the text entry for this kind of keyboard is much slower than entering information through their physical counterparts. Many techniques and layouts have been proposed to improve the typing performance of virtual keyboards, each one concerning a different issue or solving a specific problem. However, not all of them are suitable to assist seriously people with motor impairment. Methods: In order to develop an assistive virtual keyboard with improved typing performance, we performed a systematic review on scientific databases. Results: We found 250 related papers and 52 of them were selected to compose. After that, we identified eight essentials virtual keyboard features, five methods to optimize data entry performance and five metrics to assess typing performance. Conclusion: Based on this review, we introduce a concept of an assistive, optimized, compact and adaptive virtual keyboard that gathers a set of suitable techniques such as: a new ambiguous keyboard layout, disambiguation algorithms, dynamic scan techniques, static text prediction of letters and words and, finally, the use of phonetic and similarity algorithms to reduce the user's typing error rate.

Analyzing the Impact of Cognitive Load in Evaluating Gaze-Based Typing

“…In each boxplot we have 25 samples in total (outliers are omitted), corresponding to the 5 participants and 5 sessions for each participant.Keyboard C (with mean value 0.0824) has lesser cognitive load compared to both Keyboard A (with mean value 0.0865) and B (with mean value 0.0860). T-test shows that the differences are significant (Keyboard A and C with p=0.01542, N=150; Keyboard B and C with p=0.00047, N=150)7 . Keyboard C embeds individual suggestions on the letters itself and hence users might have required less…”

Design and evaluation of a time adaptive multimodal virtual keyboard

“…Dwell-free techniques have been implemented with user interfaces of virtual keyboard applications wherein the dwellfree eye-typing systems provide moderately higher text entry rate than dwell based eye-typing systems [25][26][27]. The user interfaces of virtual keyboard systems have been designed based on various keyboard approaches such as the Dvorak, FITALY, OPTI, Cirrin, Lewis, Hookes, Chubon, Metropolis, and ATOMIK [28]. However, it is challenging to control these keyboards through gaze detection due to the underlying gaze detection procedure where the accuracy decreases in relation to the proximity of the commands.…”

“…The usability of virtual keyboard systems with gaze-based access controls is currently impaired by the difficulty to set optimal values to the key parameters of the system, such as the dwell time, as they can depend on the user (e.g., fatigue, knowledge of the system) [28]. In addition, the fluctuation of attention, the degree of fatigue, and the users' head motion while controlling the application represent obstacles for efficient gaze-based access controls as they can lead to low performance [52].…”

Toward Optimization of Gaze-Controlled Human–Computer Interaction: Application to Hindi Virtual Keyboard for Stroke Patients

“…In general, AAC systems include a large set of gestural, alphabetical, and iconic communications [3]. This area of research is growing rapidly to meet the needs of severe speech and motor impaired individuals, such as aphasia and tetraplegia patients [4]. An AAC system can be divided into two distinct components: input device(s) and communication software.…”

“…The design of an efficient virtual keyboard is mainly driven by its corresponding language script [15]. Currently, the majority of the available virtual keyboards are targeted to the English language and likewise, the optimization schemes are developed in accordance with this language (for review see [4], [16]). However, changes in the nature and number of the alphabets, which may accompany with a change in language, may render the techniques developed for the English language ineffective or even inapplicable for other languages.…”