Footpad Mouse Buttons

Yesterday was a good day. After lunch, Doug came over with the new gadget he had been working on. It is a footpad to place on the foot rest of my wheelchair. Embedded in it are 2 switches, one for each foot. Connected to the switches is a wire which goes up to the mouse. This device will allow me to click the mouse buttons with my feet.

I have been steadily losing control of my last remaining hand. Although I can still move 2 fingers and a thumb, they have become too weak to click the mouse. Right now, using Dragon (voice recognition software), I am still able to “click” the mouse. I say “mouseclick” or “right mouseclick” and Dragon recognizes my verbal commands and does the clicking for me.

Dragon works, but compared to clicking with your finger, it’s slow. It takes time for the computer to figure out what I’m saying then to click the mouse. I’m not complaining, because I know without it I wouldn’t be able to use this computer. It is my lifeline to the world. But, because it is slow, it makes many tasks cumbersome and hard to do. I also, can’t click and hold the mouse button down. So, dragging items and selecting items on the screen are almost impossible to do.

I’m excited. When we tried it, the prototype worked well, better than we expected. We made a few minor changes. Doug will make some adjustments this week and should have it ready by next. With it, I should gain a lot of functionality back. I anticipate by using my feet, mouse clicking should be easy once again. 

This is good. It will be nice, for a change, to have the day where I will be able to do more, not less, than the day before.

Thanks Doug!