Feature proposal: Alternative input system based on low-cost webcam

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

Description
=======

Some physically impaired users are not able to use the mouse, so an
alternative input system is required. web-cams are a really common and
cheap device these days (most of modern laptops include it), so one
option is use a webcam to track the motion of any object visible by the
camera and moves the mouse cursor according to the path of the tracked
object (a user's head, for example).


Module proposed
===========

In order to fulfill this feature, we propose eViacam (Enable Viacam) [1].

eViacam is a mouse replacement software that moves the pointer as you
move your head. It works on standard PCs equipped with a web camera. No
additional hardware is required. Based on the award winning Facial Mouse
software.

eViacam is a mature tool, with several years of development, with a user
base, and active help forums. It was also reported that it works fine
with other GNOME related modules like Dasher.


Owner
====

César Mauri


Involved parties
==========

Accessibility team


Current Status
=========

As I said on the module proposal this is an already mature tool, so
towards 3.4 the basic issues is about the integration with GNOME.
  * Repositories: right now it is on sourceforge. This shouldn't be a
blocker thought.
  * Bugzilla: pending (but probably we should wait until this feature is
approved)
  * Look and feel: some people could not agree with current interface
[2]. This shouldn't be a blocker thought.

And finally, the main concern could be about the graphical toolkit.
eViacam uses wxWidgets [3][4], in order to ensure a native look and feel
on both Windows and Linux systems. wxGTK is the most common wxWidgets
port, meaning that it will be using Gtk+ native widgets wherever
possible. This feature proposal would include the proposal of wxWidgets
as a external dependency.


Note
===

In addition to wxwidgets, eViacam has also dependencies with opencv and
libv4l1, that should be included as external dependencies.


[1] http://eviacam.sourceforge.net/eviacam.php
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/eviacam/#screenshots
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wxwidgets
[4] http://wxwidgets.org/


-- 
Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias