- OptiKey is a piece of software I've developed for Windows.
When paired with an eye tracking device
it allows you full computer control and speech generation
using only your eyes.
It's designed for people with motor and speech limitations,
specifically people Motor neurone disease or ALS.
OptiKey is free 100%,
it's fully free, fully open source forever.
I decided very early on that this
wasn't gonna be a profit making exercise.
I had an aunt who died about four and bit years ago
from motor neurone disease,
and I sort of took two things away
from the whole experience.
One was how horrible these
sort of degenerative diseases can be.
And the second thing was that the solutions
available to help people communicate
as they're losing their faculties
and losing control of their body,
they're either sort of insufficient or
they're very very expensive.
And that struck me as being fiercely unfair
and I thought I had a shot of doing something about it.
The tragic nature of things like ALS
and Motor neurone disease is in their extreme cases,
you are locked in your bodies.
It's not called Locked-in syndrome for no reason.
And software like this and solutions like this
give you an outlet to the world
that you might not otherwise have.
And being able to take the price tag off that,
that's the important thing.
When I've seen it being used it just feels incredible
to watch people use something I've created
and sort of feel like I've given them a shot at
communication they might not otherwise had.
Right now it's being translated by
a group of about 25 volunteers
into over 15 different languages.
So the next thing you should see is
is being released in French, German, Serbian,
all sorts of languages coming out.
What I'd really like is anyone
with sort of a programming inclination out there
to get on GitHub, have a look at the source code,
and contribute.
Because the project's gaining momentum
and I'd love everyone to get involved.
So to me OptiKey is an opportunity for me
to do something with my career
that I'm gonna be proud to look back on.