Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/04/cartoonist-with-als-uses-eye-gaze-tracking-technology-in-order-to-continue-creating.html
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Ugh. ALS is just the fucking worse. My dad’s fishing buddy died from it a decade or so ago. And my uncle died from it about 5 years ago.
It is a horrible disease and I hate it. It is one of those things that would make me take a long camping trip and not come back.
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A positive case of Male Gaze? Poor guy.
My father-in-law had ALS and towards the end he used an eye-tracking tablet to write and speak. It was windows-based and could basically do anything you could do with windows if you operated it using only a mouse and screen-based keyboard. I helped set it up for him and tried it myself on a number of occasions. Obviously it’s a good thing to have if you’re out of other options, but make no mistake: using eye-tracking devices is a pain in the ass and way more fatiguing than a lot of people assume. The technology is relatively simple and would be very cheap and easy to implement as standard features in smart phones and tablets these days, if there was a wider market for it. But I’m sure the technology folks at Apple and other places realize that anyone with at least one working finger would get frustrated and stop using the eye gaze as soon as the novelty wore off. The fact that this artist plans to use this technology to continue creating art really speaks to his level of dedication. In a way it’s more impressive than painting with your feet like that “My Left Foot” guy from Ireland.
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