SpeakFaster Observer: Long-Term Instrumentation of Eye-Gaze Typing for Measuring AAC Communication

Accelerating communication for users with severe motor and speech impairments, in particular for eye-gaze-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device users, is a longstanding area of research. However, observation of such users’ communication over extended durations has been limited. This case study presents the real-world experience of developing and field-testing a tool for observing and curating the gaze typing-based communication of an eye-gaze AAC user with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). With the intent to observe and develop technology to accelerate eye-gaze typed communication, we designed a tool and a protocol called the SpeakFaster Observer to measure everyday conversational text entry by the gaze-typing user, as well as several consenting conversation partners of the AAC user. We detail the design of the Observer software and data curation protocol, along with considerations for privacy protection. The deployment of the data protocol from November 2021 to April 2022 yielded a rich dataset of gaze-based AAC text entry from everyday life, consisting of 130+ hours of gaze keystrokes and 5,000+ curated speech utterances from the AAC user and the conversation partners. We present the key statistics of the data, including the speed (8.1 ± 3.9 words per minute) and keystroke saving rate (-0.14 ± 0.83) of gaze typing, patterns of utterance repetition and reuse, and the temporal dynamics of conversation turn-taking in gaze-based communication. We share our findings and also open source our data collection tools to further research in this domain.