Free Software Helps Disabled Use Mouse

An anonymous reader writes "A University of Washington team has developed a piece of free software to help those with motor control problems do what most of us take for granted every day: use a computer mouse to get stuff done. The Pointing Magnifier combines an area cursor with visual and motor magnification, reducing need for fine, precise pointing. The UW team is actively seeking user feedback."

Re:Cool

[gd2shoe]

If you lost both mouse and keyboard for 48 hours, I bet you'd beg to be given your mouse back. (even if you couldn't have your keyboard)

Give them a break. It's a start.

Cool research, but I see a worrisome trend

[93 Escort Wagon]

This work is funded by Microsoft Research, Intel Research, and the National Science Foundation. If it leads to breakthroughs that are available to all individuals, no matter what computing platform they choose - great! But I've seen other public+private funded research end up owned and locked up by start-ups driven by the faculty doing the research. These end up benefiting the faculty member financially, they benefit the private companies who've invested, and they can be a windfall for the university - but the general public gets no benefit unless they buy into the commercial product. This bothers me, given that a good chunk of the work was done on the public dime (or, more accurately, on the public hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Research at publicly funded universities should be at least partially owned by the tax-paying public. It's not like these researchers are starving - full professors in engineering are making on the order of 20K a month, whether they're bringing in grants or not.

Re:Well you know what, motor control tards?

[pitterpatter]

Some of us with motor control problems can no longer use a keyboard. My fingers won't lift and separate enough to hit individual keys any more. I can still use a terminal, but it has to be in a GUI interface so I can use an on-screen keyboard.