Open and portable software library for rapid eye tracking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open and portable software library for rapid eye tracking

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

The accessibility barriers for people with MDVI prevents them from an ideal interaction with computers.In the concrete context of adult education in IT, people with shortsightedness use screen magnifiers. These enlarge parts of the screen using the mouse cursor as guide. This inhibits a fluent lecture of text in many situations. The main reason for this is that the mouse must be moved along the text. View-centric magnification, in this case, can tremendously improve the quality of access to computers. An initial analysis of the solutions available has led to the idea that a software library should exist that solves most of the eye-motion-tracking problem. But a survey of openly available software libraries lead to disillusioning results. Solutions were either imprecise, too slow, too expensive or simply did not provide all the required features.Based on this, the idea for this project emerged. The precise objectives are the following: 1) Create a survey of available software libraries. Evaluate them in detail with respect the special needs for people with MDVI. 2) Create a consolidated library that is optimally applicable. The library must therefore be fast, precise and platform independent. 3) Create the initially anticipated view-centric magnification application.The whole process depends on stakeholders from various areas of operations. The precise requirements for people with MDVI must come from experts of the field.These experts together with MDVI people will define goals, evaluate results and give feedback for an iterative improvement.Eye-tracking is usable in other fields as well. Scholars in the domain of physical disabilities will be able to formulate the requirements and evaluate the library with respect to their area.Software engineers and developers will ensure the correct implementation of all the requirements in the form of a software library and an application.The team is managed using a modern agile approach. This assures a swift adaptation to the reality of the project at any moment of time. Before kickoff, a set of rigid major-milestones and an initial set of activities respectively tasks are defined, estimated and agreed upon. Between these major-milestones monthly sprint meetings will take place. Here the progress is evaluated and the next tasks are defined and assigned. The goal is to optimally share workload between the stakeholders in order to achieve the goals declared for the milestones. Major milestones evaluations take place in the context of proper meetings. All other meetings will be online video conferences.The produced results will be distributed through platforms that are open for everybody. The reason for this is to promote new projects based on the results of this research.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 84995,86 Eur

Project Coordinator

Centre pour le Développement des compétences relatives à la vue & Country: LU

Project Partners

• Center IRIS- Center za izobrazevanje, rehabilitacijo, inkluzijo in svetovanje za slepe in slabovidne
• Lega del Filo d’Oro Onlus
• POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA
• FUNDACION ASPAYM CASTILLA Y LEON