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Stephen Hawking attends the UK Premiere of "The Theory Of Everything" at Odeon Leicester Square, Dec. 9, 2014, in London.
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Hawking, 73, who has a motor neuron disease
and is almost entirely paralyzed, relies on the technology to speak.
His speech system got an upgrade from Intel last year, allowing him to
type faster, browse the Internet much easier and seamlessly switch
between tasks.
The hope is the code for that software, called Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT), will be leveraged by developers who are running Microsoft
Windows 7 or higher to create new interfaces that could help people
with ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease -- and other disabilities communicate
with the world.
In Hawking's case, his cheek sensor syncs with a switch on his glasses,
allowing him to choose characters he wishes to type, which can then be
processed by his speech synthesizer and spoken out loud from his Lenovo laptop.
It also allows the cosmologist to use various computer programs and
navigate the Internet. Intel said last year it was able to increase the
efficiency of Hawking's system by integrating predictive text
technology. The software knows Hawking's communication patterns, meaning
he has to type less than 20 percent of all characters to convey what he
wants to say.
By making the program open source, Intel said it hopes developers will
be able to experiment and expand on the system by creating new
interfaces and ways for sensors to connect with the system.
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