Who Can Use What? Proposals for the Development of a Recommender System for Selecting the Most Appropriate Text Input Method for a Given User Based on the User’s Physical Abilities.

Abstract

Those who cannot use computers are severely disenfranchised by society’s present and future reliance on digital technology. Persons with disabilities comprise a significant portion of this disenfranchised group. For persons with disabilities, one of the biggest obstacles to computer use is the input of text. This thesis aims to be the basis for the development of a recommender system to aid users with a wide array of physical abilities in selecting the most applicable text input method for them. We present a survey of text input devices both for people with disabilities and for people in the general population. We then propose a framework for the development of a full scale recommender system for selecting the most appropriate text input method for a given user based on that user’s physical abilities.