The benefits of physical edges in gesture-making: empirical support for an edge-based unistroke alphabet

People with motor impairments often cannot use a keyboard or a mouse. Our previous work showed that a handheld device, connected to a PC, could be effective for computer access for some people with motor impairments. But text entry was slow, and the popular unistroke methods like Graffiti proved difficult for some people with motor control problems. We are now investigating how physical edges can provide stability for stylus gestures, and we are designing a unistroke alphabet whose letter-forms are defined along the edges of a small plastic square hole. This paper presents data on the benefits of physical edges in making gestures. It then describes EdgeWrite, a new unistroke alphabet designed to leverage physical edges for greater stability in text entry. Keywords EdgeWrite, motor impairments, PDA, Pebbles, text entry.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Jacob O. Wobbrock
• Keywords: CHI 2003, Human Computer Interaction, Leverage Physical Edges, Motor Impairments, Text Entry