Accesibility solutions using Tobii

[Kainon]

I decided to make this post to share some of what I’ve learned in regards to accessibility for people with disabilities who are looking for potential solutions to continue gaming hands-free.
I have an ongoing RSI injury in both arms which is what started me on all of this.

I’m using a Tobii 4c Eye tracker combined with another program called Iris(search Iris eye tracking), this program allows the eyetracker to behave like a mouse with the cursor always moving to your point of gaze.
This works very well for games such as Diablo as your primary controls are based on the mouse.
However, first person games without official Tobii support will not work. Fortunately the Iris program has an FPS mode which can bring full support to games like skyrim and fallout etc.
Now the issue will be how to click and operate a keyboard, hands-free.
To do this I’ve bought a cheap used keyboard and fixed it to the floor under my desk, it’s propped up at an angle like a car pedal using a 2×4.
Now I have to remove some keys so i can use individual keys as foot pedals without hitting every key. there are many foot pedal devices you can buy but you’ll spend a lot and you could get many more input buttons using a modified keyboard.
I then use another program called AutoHotkey to reassign the keys on my floor keyboard.
Basically I’ve reassigned various keys to be my new WASD in deliberate positions so i can hit each button individually.

So assign important actions like left/right click to the keyboard.
Now there is the issue of still not having enough inputs for all the actions in a game, so for this I use a voice program called Voiceattack which allows me to bind simple or even complex macros to voice commands such as ‘Show Gear’ or ‘toggle autohotkey’ (to allow me to switch to and from custom keyboard layout) or any other actions like ‘scroll up’ etc…
I’ve also started using a Diy head tracker in combination with eye tracking. This allows me to be more accurate in aiming in fps games.

I’ve been thrilled with my Tobii eye tracker ever since I bought it and with the help of a few other programs and hardware I’ve been gaming hands-free successfully.
I hope some of this info will benefit others with similar goals

[Grant [Tobii]]

Hi @majesticwolf, that’s great! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain your situation and the solutions you have found for your needs. We are quite sure other users will find this information of great use.

When it comes to first person games (or any) that do not yet provide proper Tobii support, we would recommend that you petition the game’s designers directly either on their own forums or feature request platforms if available.

Here at Tobii, we are constantly in talks with the games companies but of course they wish to hear the demand from their own consumers before committing so by all means reach out to them as well!

Thanks once again for your post, please feel free to share more in the future.

[Glenn]

Hi @majesticwolf, Hi, I’m a high level quadriplegic and I’ve just purchased a Tobii eye tracker 4c to try and help me in gaming. I’ve just installed Project IRIS and I was wondering if you could please tell me if there’s any documentation I can read to help configure it.

I’m trying to use the FPS mode and every time I make an interactor the size of the screen it stays in the foreground and I cannot access anything behind it. Plus every time I have the Tobii eye tracker 4c turned on and I start Project IRIS the mouse cursor goes crazy.

If you could please help me out that would be greatly appreciated because this is the only reason I have purchased the Tobii eye tracker 4c and I really want to start playing FPS and shooter games.

I have tried the Project IRIS site and forums but I think they have given up on the software.

Thank you for your help.
Glenn

[Kainon]

Hi Glenn,

First off for troubleshooting reasons why the mouse cursor may be unstable, it could be you need to adjust the distance between your eyes and the Tracker, you could try re-calibrating through your Tobii software. ( For me I’ve found A distance about 24″ with the tracker just below my eye level works great ) other issues that could cause this could be light interference from an open window, or perhaps something reflective which can shine back at the tracker also causing interference.
As for the IRIS software itself, In your ‘Advanced’ tab I recommend setting your ‘Steadiness’ slider all the way up, and the ‘Saccade Threshold’ to 3/4 up, which will improve stability significantly.

I know exactly what you mean about not being able to access things behind the interactor, There seem to be a few pitfalls in IRIS that can make it a bit difficult to use sometimes. However there is a certain order of doing things that should avoid these problems.
So when making an interactor I feel it’s important to first set the opacity to something you can see through, in case you get stuck.
Then to create an interactor that spans the entire screen, what I recommend doing is: set your opacity to be see-through, then ‘Lock’ the interactor.
To edit the position and size of the we’re going to use XY and Width/Height boxes, First set your X and Y both to 0 Which should put the interactor in the top left corner of your screen. Next we will do sizing for the interactor, For example, my monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080, so what I will input is 1920 for my width and 1080 for my height.

After doing this your interactor will now be correctly set for your monitor resolution( you may encounter a strange issue where the interactor is not displaying correctly and appears ‘out of position’, You can disregard this as it’s just a bug. The next time you restart the program and look at it again you should see it’s in the correct position )

After everything is set with position and size, you can go to your ‘Action’ tab And set the action type to ‘FPS View’ And be able to edit all of the curves From here to achieve the sensitivity and dead zone to find what feels right for your particular game.
( Be sure to have set a hotkey that will ‘Pause all interactors’ Because it can be quite easy to get stuck in FPS mode )

I hope some of this this will help you out, I will also send you a private message with my email, if you’d like to speak further about this and more solutions I’ve discovered since my original post. I would also be very interested to hear more about the things you use in your personal setup as well.

Best regards,
Kainon

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