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Tag: Assistive Technology

August 19, 2025 Muireann Dempsey

Tap, Type, Play! Making Keyboards Fun for Kids

Have you ever watched your child tap away at a

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An arrow pointing to the word Information with a map of the world in the background

July 24, 2025 Sean Loughran

Online resource to help you find the AT you are looking for: the GPII Unified Listing

The Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) Unified Listing serves as

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A boy sitting in a wheel chair using eye gaze to look at a screen

June 26, 2025 Sean Loughran

Getting Started with Eye Gaze or Eye-Tracking Software

Eye gaze technology can open up new opportunities for individuals

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June 13, 2025 KLaSalle

Our Contribution to An Leabharlann

We’re pleased to share that a member of our team

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One Hand on a Keyboard

May 27, 2025 Juliann Bergin

Learn One-Handed Typing

For individuals learning to type with one hand, choosing the

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March 24, 2025 KLaSalle

Enable Ireland’s Additional Training and Support Resource Page

Assistive Technology is meant to enable independence, but learning how

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girl using a braille board and wearing headphones sitting in front of a computer screen

October 23, 2024 Mary Relihan

Are you seeking funding for Assistive Technology?

If so, here is a brief guide to how the

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February 6, 2024 Sean Loughran

Mounting Assistive Technology onto a wheelchair

Mounting assistive technology onto a wheelchair can greatly enhance the

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December 6, 2023 Sean Loughran

Using a Chromebook for users with diverse needs

Google Chromebooks offer various assistive technology options to support users

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November 28, 2023 Sean Loughran

Accessible apps, games and toys

Enable Ireland’s National Assistive Technology Service has gathered together information

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In this video I'll briefly show how to easily build an Optikey Dynamic Keyboard using our build document and an AI assistant that can be used as an alternative interfaces for games or apps.

Descriptive Transcript
[Video starts showing the optikey on screen keyboard typing "optikey" on a blank document. It then switches to the Special Effect webpage about EyeMine]
Narrator: OptiKey is a free on screen keyboard that
people control with their eyes, head, mouse, a joystick or a touchscreen.

It can do much more than type though. The UK gaming charity Special Effect
built EyeMine from it so that people could play Minecraft with their eyes.

[The Spotify control keyboards are shown on screen here. 3 keyboards. One to launch Spotify, YouTube or VLC. One to control the apps with buttons like Next previous, play pause and a favorates keyboard.]

OptiKey also has dynamic keyboards. They are small text files that describe
keyboards, what each key says and what it does, such as pressing a key or opening a programme.

It's a similar idea to the grids in software like the Grid 3 or Communicator.

In my experience, dynamic keyboards are underused because there's no editor with buttons and menus.

You have to write the files yourself. That's where an AI assistant comes in.

[Claude AI chat interface, prompt added and edited. Build document uploaded. Screenshot of game controls uploaded]

We wrote a build document and instructions with working examples. I'll upload it, then add a short message,
the app I want to control, the functions I want and how the person will use it, and a screenshot of the game controls in
this case.

Although I could just write them down. Or sometimes you could even just ask the AI to find out the keyboard shortcuts for you.

A few moments later I have a first draft, a layout, the keyboard files, and the setup steps.

I saved the files in a folder. There's an extra step here that you won't need to do because the new prompt asks
the AI to give you the file to directly download.

If you're an optic key user, put the file in your dynamic keyboards folder or if you just want to use this
optickey for this purpose, as we show here in the console, you can set Optikey to look for this keyboard file on opening so we can
restart optiKey.

And here's our new dynamic keyboard.

[Keyboard docked at the bottom of the screen controling the supermario game]

It's a bit hit and miss for these browser based games, but for well designed and implemented games and apps this should work pretty solidly.

Optikey Dynamic keyboards: Accessible alternative access for apps and games

Musician Cillian McSweeney gives us a brief history of his life as a musician who uses Assistive Technology. While he tells his story we see a montage of clips of him playing music live and on TV. We see him using a sound beam, switches and eye gaze. and playing with various bands and musicians in different venues. The second half is a screen recording where he shows a free program that he uses called Eye Play Chords. At the end of the video there's a QR code linking to My Breath My Music where the software can be downloaded.

Eye Play Chords

Smart Support AT for Alzheimer's Management

How to set up an Action Block on Android to make WhatsApp calls

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Other Resources

AT HIVE
CALL Scotland
David Banes Access Services
Enable Ireland: Additional Training and Support Resources
Enable Ireland: eLearning Courses
Eventbrite National Assistive Technology Training Service, Enable Irelan d
Freedom Tech
GPII Unified Listings

ATandMe Eventbrite

ATandMe YouTube

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