Open Access

Alexander Mertens, Nicole Jochems, Christopher M. Schlick, Daniel Dünnebacke, Jan Henrik Dornberg

• People with tremor find it often very difficult to use IT services and therefore attain very low levels of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, when doing so. The currently available user interfaces do not guarantee sufficient precision for information input. Individuals suffering from intention tremor show a significant worsening when moving towards a button, precisely because target-oriented movements produce shaking in the affected body parts. For this target group a new method regarding the information input has been developed and evaluated. This technique enables the persons concerned to input information on a touch screen by using a wiping movement. Variations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement rather than a single direct movement towards a target field. Moreover, the screen surface causes a significant friction that helps to damp tremor forces. The user input can be identified by the computer with high accuracy by means of special heuristics which also assist barrier free access among the target group.