Thiruvananthapuram :
In its effort to provide assistive technology to people with motor disabilities, International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an organization under state IT department, will collaborate with AsTeRICS Academy in Austria.
The European academy will support ICFOSS in developing its capabilities in a range of assistive tools to support individuals with motor disorders for using computers and other electronic equipment.
An Austrian group consisting of two technologists from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien is currently in the city in connection with Swatantra 2017, the two-day triennial free software conference being organized by ICFOSS. The team will lead a workshop from Monday at ICFOSS in Technopark for assembling and production of various products they have developed.
“This will be a milestone in Kerala’s efforts in using assistive technology for the welfare of the masses, especially marginalized sections of the society,” said IT secretary M Shivasankar. “ICFOSS is poised to take a lead in this regard and it has already established a research facility jointly with College of Engineering Trivandrum,” he added.
One of such technologies is FlipMouse that acts as an alternative input device for challenged people who prefer or need other input variants than a standard computer mouse or keyboard. Using a FlipMouse, keyboard and mouse activities can be created via slightest finger or mouth interaction. This enables precise control of computer mouse or keyboard actions. Click activities can be created via sip and puff activities, or by attaching external switches to the device. This can be used to control wheelchairs, play games on computers and other activities.
“These technologies and products will be offered to ICFOSS as a do-it-yourself construction kit,” said ICFOSS director Jayashankar Prasad. “This will help us in the production of the equipment at very low cost,” he added.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India . News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram News / TNN / December 18th, 2017