Eye-tracking assistive technology: Is this effective for the developmental age? Evaluation of eye-tracking systems for children and adolescents with cerebral palsy

Objective. The main purpose of this study is to better understand whether eye-tracking technologies might be considered as a valid tool for enhancing communication and facilitating the process of rehabilitation, in order to improve the empowerment of persons in developmental age. Main content. The differences between the performance of subjects with cerebral palsy or similar movement disorders and the performance of subjects without disabilities while executing an eye pointing task has been analysed. Results. show that the performance of users with cerebral palsy had a significant difference in terms of efficiency compared to those without diagnosed body impairments, which showed both lower completion times and no errors during the entire test session. Conclusions. We argue that the issues emerged during the interaction should lead future studies to focus on the analysis of the usability of these systems with respect to users with neurological diseases in developmental age. © 2011 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.