Microsoft announced today that Windows 10 will soon support eye tracking and a new experience called Eye control. The new technology is actually already available in beta on the latest Windows 10 Insider builds, and it comes from a hackaton project inspired by one person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) .
“Eye Control makes Windows 10 more accessible by empowering people with disabilities to operate an onscreen mouse, keyboard, and text-to-speech experience using only their eyes,” the company explains on its Accessibility blog. “The experience requires a compatible eye tracker, like the Tobii 4C, which unlocks access to the Windows operating system to be able to do the tasks one could previously accomplish with a physical mouse and keyboard.”
PC gamers may know Tobii for its eye tracking technology for PC games and VR. The company also created a division focused on accessibility called Dynavox, building various accessibility functions using eye tracking on Windows PCs. “Tobii Dynavox’s is now working to ensure that both its current and new generations of eye tracking devices and software will be compatible with Eye Control in Windows,” explained the company in a separate blog post.
It’s still not clear if Eye tracking will be ready for the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, but this is exactly the type of features showing Microsoft’s commitment to empower everyone to achieve more. Now, we’ll see if the Windows Insider team will discuss this new eye tracking feature when new Windows 10 preview builds will be released.
