Talking point

Stephen Hawking’s speech system has been released by Intel to the public for free as an open source code. According to the Verge, the company is hoping that developers will use it and expand its application to a wider range of disabilities.

The Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) facilitates the use of computers by differently-abled users with very little movement and was developed to help Hawking, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) communicate by translating his facial movements into text.

It consists of three parts, the input from an infrared sensor or webcam that detects facial movements, the interface that selects letters to form words and the auto complete-like software that predicts what the user is typing.

Also, the software’s virtual keyboard can be used to select and utilise different programmes and browse the internet.

Sai Prasad, ACAT’s project owner, wrote on Intel’s website that their hope is that by open sourcing this configurable platform, developers will continue to expand on their system by adding new user interfaces, new sensing modalities, word prediction and many other features. ACAT is only available for PCs and the software and the user guide can be found on Github. — ANI