"I will lose my voice in 3 months; I don't want to lose me...my personality".

Our mission was to update the UI and the capabilities of the ACAT system (interface designed for Stephen Hawkins) and improve usage time and speed, to help Dr Peter Scott-Morgan retain his personality.

Six people are diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) every day in the UK. Dr Peter Scott-Morgan's diagnosis was just two years ago. He told us, "I will lose my voice in three months; I don't want to lose me... my personality".

Peter asked us to find a way to preserve and help him use his own voice so that he could maintain an important expression of his personality when his illness took his ability to speak for himself.

We created a new, faster and more comfortable interface for ACAT (a toolkit created for Stephen Hawking by Intel). We designed a new

Our role was to redesign the front end, enabling it to interface with several new technologies: eye tracking, avatar, speech synthesis and AI predictive text. We overhauled the UI and UX to make it faster, more intelligent, more comfortable and easier to use. We updated it so that it can now be controlled by eye movement, using readily available and affordable hardware. We spent time with Peter, his family and carers to understand his needs and translate them into the interface. We developed our understanding of the human eye (academic and gaming research), so the tracking interface was more comfortable and faster.

The new software is open-source so that people with limited financial means can use it to continue communicating – one interface that controls a computer, speech and a virtual avatar.

This project is an example of truly inclusive design, and none of the companies involved stands to profit commercially. It’s a social responsibility effort to help people with extreme disability, such as the effects of MND. We hope, in future, it could be extended and adapted for patients with other disabilities such as mouth cancer and stroke paralysis. This project allows sufferers to retain those most human of traits: communication and personality.

While Peter inspired this project, it’s not all about him. He’s stepping forward for a greater cause, for the benefit of all disabled people around the world – just as Stephen Hawking did. With this latest overhaul of the interface, it will still continue to be open-source and free for all around the world. Numerous updates will come as the technology and hardware improves and it will also become more affordable as time goes on. This is just another step towards allowing patients to interface with technology more easily and more like themselves.