The main issues that occur to me are regarding the nature of the eyeblink switch. My understanding is that generally they are light-based and primarily infra-red. If so this could be a source of hazard from spurious activations  in daylight, especially bright sunshine. Also they usually have a threshold setting to adjust sensitivity that is necessary for effective operation, so depending on set up it might not take much of a ‘slip’ in sensor position to either cause unexpected and uncontrolled activation, or prevent activation. My judgement based on these points is that it would be very hard to generalise on this and would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis. You would need a detailed risk assessment, including whether a fail-safe or fail-secure situation was more of an issue; e.g. would unsupervised control be primarily for  driving or tilt/recline in relation to breathing/swallowing. This is something that we would be prepared to consider, but even if we agreed, would require formal ‘sign up’ to the developed protocol from client and care team.

 

Good luck!

 

Jeremy

 

 

 

We do single switch relatively often on power wheelchairs as the last option for control. Great for power feature control, pretty slow and awkward for any driving. Eye blink switch could work I suppose, if you could keep it in the right place with tilt/recline.   

 

 

 

I know of a single switch scanning drive system, but have been told it is very difficult to use and set up etc.  Never actually seen it in operation. 

 

Theoretically, one could use an eye blink switch with that.  Of course I don’t think I need to expound to this list the difficulty of operating, attaining and maintaining positioning of an eye blink switch.  That is a whole separate issue with no particularly easy answer….

 

SO short answer is I have heard of it.  Also short answer is I have never seen it and have significant reservations about even trying it…

 

From: xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com [mailto:xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com] On Behalf Of Lisa Bruening
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 3:16 PM
To: xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com
Subject: Re: wheelchair question

 

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