Eye Control for Windows 10

Their vision was simple, said Matthew Mack, one of the leaders of the 2014 Hackathon team known as Ability Eye Gaze. “Steve had issued a challenge to Microsoft to develop technology to help people with ALS, specifically to help him communicate more easily, play with his son and move his wheelchair independently.”

The Eye Gaze team had set out to do a project to help Steve Gleason, a former pro football player who is living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Gleason’s foundation aims to raise awareness about ALS, as well as to give others living with it the “leading edge technology, equipment and services” they need. The project united two dozen researchers, engineers, designers, program managers and media pros from across Microsoft, and was one of the 3,000-plus teams that participated in Microsoft’s first-ever global Hackathon. The team aimed to use Surface 3, Kinect and other Microsoft technologies to give independence to people with disabilities.

Clear, powerful—and, according to their colleagues and the company’s senior leaders, the most transformative idea to come out of the Hackathon, netting it the Grand Prize award for 2014. And it was only the first chapter of the story.

The project was received so enthusiastically by employees and the ALS community that a new Microsoft Research team was created to understand the potential of eye-tracking technology. The Microsoft Enable team in Microsoft Artificial Intelligence & Research started to work closely with Steve’s nonprofit, Team Gleason as well as the ALS Association (ALSA) Evergreen Chapter, an organization that supports people living with ALS and their loved ones through services and education. When the Windows team came across this technology, they immediately saw the potential for eye tracking to change people’s lives, and assigned a team of engineers to bring eye tracking support to Windows.

Three years after the first prototype at the 2014 Hackathon, Windows 10 now includes built-in eye tracking support and an experience called Eye Control that empowers people with disabilities to use a compatible eye tracker to operate an on-screen mouse, keyboard and text-to-speech experience in Windows 10 using only their eyes. “Having Eye Control in Windows 10 continues to bridge the gap between widely used technology and people with disabilities. It’s simply liberating,” summarizes Steve.