Our Work
Open-source software for AAC, built around two ideas: cheap Android hardware, and a spectrum of input methods that are designed to take advantage of JustType's unique design — using a total of only eight keys.
Most AAC users today rely on devices that cost thousands of dollars and lock the user inside a single app. We're working on something different — software that runs on an ordinary Android phone or tablet, gives the user the whole device (messaging, email, web, everything), and adapts to whatever input method works best for them today. Both projects below are free, open-source, and under active development.
HeadBoard
Control your device with your head, using only an Android tablet's front camera.
For someone who can't easily use a touchscreen but has reliable head movement, HeadBoard turns an inexpensive Android tablet into a full communication device without any extra hardware. A small camera view in the corner watches your head; an on-screen cursor follows. There are two options to type, using only head movement: tracing a continuous path across the keys, the same way Swype works on a phone; or use JustType, where you can activate a key by just moving your head briefly in its direction — no dwell, and no switch press required.
What's different about HeadBoard
- Two cursors that work together. The hardest part of head-tracking is that small head movements can't always land precisely on the right key, so users end up overshooting and slowing down. HeadBoard uses two cursors at once — a fast green "Head Cursor" that tracks your movement in real time, and a slower blue "Path Cursor" that smooths out the actual typing. You can move your head quickly, even overshoot, and the typing stays accurate — because you are just pulling the Path Cursor along behind.
- Smarter use of screen space. The keyboard area is treated as a separate region with its own, finer cursor mapping — so the same head movement gives you more precision exactly where you need it. Moving the cursor between regions is quick: just push against the boundary for a moment.
- Visual feedback you can read at a glance. The cursor changes color and animates through a clock-sweep as it moves between actions (tap, long-press, drag, cancel). You can see what the system is about to do, and wait just long enough for it to happen, or make an adjustment and do something else.
- Optional Bluetooth switch support. HeadBoard can use any standard ability switch over Bluetooth for activating taps — useful when timing or precision through head movement alone is hard. CPF has a small number of prototype Bluetooth switch interfaces and can point you to compatible $25 commercially-available equivalents.
[HeadBoard screenshot — green Head Cursor + blue Path Cursor on the OpenBoard keyboard. To be added.]
JustType
An 8-key keyboard, designed to keep working as your abilities change.
JustType is a re-imagining of a method our founder co-invented in the early 1990s. Instead of presenting 26 letter keys, it groups the alphabet onto just 8 keys and uses prediction to figure out which word you meant. Selecting from 8 things instead of 26 is faster, more forgiving, and — crucially — works with almost every input method a person can manage.
Why 8 keys matters
It sounds counterintuitive, but choosing from 8 keys is close to the information-theoretical sweet spot for typing. Each press carries about 3 bits of information; the average English letter conveys about 2.6. In practical terms: the effort per keypress drops dramatically without losing much speed, because the predictor handles the ambiguity.
And something else almost magical happens when you only need eight keys: virtually all keyboards have to present a significantly larger number of keys, so the keys become packed together in a limited area. That means you have to travel across keys that you don't want in order to get to the key that you do want. What that means is that, once you get to that key that you want to press, you have to do "something extra" — wait there and "dwell" on the key, press an external switch, make some kind of recognizable gesture… — in order to convey that you're not just "passing through," that you really want to hit that key. With only eight keys in JustType, they can be arranged as eight big targets around an empty space, so all you need to do to press one is to "touch it" — even for an instant. Nothing "extra" required.
For someone whose movement is limited, that drop in effort is the difference between communication being possible and communication being exhausting.
One keyboard, many ways to use it
JustType is built so the same keyboard works with whatever input method the user can manage today, and continues to work if that changes:
- Direct Selection — tap the keys on the screen.
- Head tracking — move your head toward one of 8 compass directions to pick a key.
- Joystick — same compass-direction idea using an external Bluetooth joystick. A wheelchair-controller joystick should work with the right configuration.
- Single-switch Scanning — with only 8 keys, automatic scanning is surprisingly efficient. JustType can also "skip over" keys whose letters can't form any word that matches what's been typed so far.
- Two-switch Selection — efficient, no timing pressure on the user, and no unnecessary waiting.
- Directional Selection — a new approach that is possible with an 8-key keyboard: just stroke the screen in any of 8 compass directions; the gesture can happen anywhere on screen.
- Eye-gaze — not yet available, but JustType's small selection set will likely make it one of the first practical options when affordable Android eye-gaze arrives.
This matters most for people with progressive conditions like ALS, where the input method that works today may not work in a year. With JustType, the interface to language stays the same; only the way you tell the keyboard which key you want changes.
Other things JustType does
- It's the system keyboard for the device, so it works in texting, email, browsing, document creation — anywhere on Android.
- It has a dedicated Delete key for simple error recovery (no overloaded long-presses required).
- It can speak letters, words, or whole sentences aloud.
- The size can be adjusted: make it bigger to have keys that are bigger targets, easier to touch or to see, or make it smaller, to leave more room for the text field. Future plans include integrating JustType inside symbol-based AAC apps to run in parallel and support efforts to teach literacy skills.
- It supports abbreviation expansion.
- It can be set to an alphabetic layout if the optimized arrangement seems too unfamiliar at first.
[JustType keyboard screenshot — main 8-key layout. To be added.]
Where these two projects meet
HeadBoard and JustType are designed to work together. HeadBoard provides head tracking and continuous-path input on a standard Qwerty keyboard, and works great for users who have (or develop) the necessary level of cursor control. JustType provides a radically simplified 8-key alternative for users who need fewer, larger targets — and JustType uses HeadBoard's head-tracking when the user wants to type with head movement.
The thread connecting both is the same: build for the cheapest hardware people actually have, give the whole device back to the user, and never close off a path forward.