Hi, everybody. A few more details of my son's computer. The resolution is 1024/768 on a Tobii I12+ Windows PC. The eye tracking click menu takes between 10% and 20% of the screen width and all of its height (as per the enclosed snapshots). The eye tracking keyboard takes the bottom half of the screen.

I'll actually be using the desktop version of Mathematica rather than the cloud version, since my son needs palettes, but since I'm having some license problems I thought I'd post these to give everybody an idea of the playing field.

Attachments:

TobiiI12+_EyeKey...png

TobiiI12+_EyeRig...png

TobiiI12+_EyeRig...png

Hello Myles Dear,

For item #3, if you only want to remove some things from the Classroom Assistant Palette for your son's use, here is something you might try: 1. Open the Classroom Assistant Palette. 2. Right-click somewhere inside. 3. Click "Generate Notebook." 4. Manually select and delete parts of the palette in the new notebook graphically. 4. Select the cell in the notebook. 5. In the Palettes menu, click "Generate Palette from Selection."

This process may be tedious. I hope it helps though. Maybe someone has a less tedious solution.

Ah I think you want him to write things that look like typeset math not code but here is the code-ier version which we could use for some of the subtopics even if some subtopics are using templates. Having simple code commands might be very useful for things like Simplify[] and Solve[]

This is good info Myles.

What is the size (in pixels) of a single on-screen keyboard button? If we stick a tiny template indicator inside of a button of the same size, will your son be able to see it? Currently the keyboard buttons have just a single easy to read letter in each button, will a template with thin lines inside of their work? Can you verify the smallest template that will be comfortable for him to read?

If we follow the keyboard button sizes, then we can fit a list of topics at the top, subtopics below that, a row of templates from the subtopic, and finally a row of commonly used buttons below that.

If the screen is 1024x768 and the tobii controls on the left are 15% of the width and we need the top half of the screen to display the math he is inputting, then we have about 870x380 pixels for the control area. I guess that means the buttons are around 65 pixels wide with 10 pixel padding on each side?

Attached is a notebook that you can modify to test various size buttons and layouts that will generate an image with controllable pixel size so you can open it on his computer to see if it look as you want and your son can read it.

Attachments:

test image layout.nb

It is good to see that Kyle Keane has reached out to you. I am also curious if I can help a bit. Both the Basic Math Assistant and Classroom Assistant palettes were created with the idea that a keyboard was not available and they could be made large by changing the magnification level. However, as you have noticed, they are packed with functionality that is not useful to your son is this year. How would you suggest modifying the palette(s) so they could better serve your son? You can email me directly: ericschulz at mac.com.

Send me a PM and we can have a zoom chat. I teach assistive tech at MIT and am an avid Wolfram user.

Hi, Kyle. For your first point, please look at the enclosed video that will hopefully explain exactly what a Grid 3 zoom mouse control looks like (which I call zoom-to-select in my earlier comment). First, the function (left click, right click, double click, drag) is selected, and then the user moves their eyes and fixes their attention on a point. The zoom proceeds, with the user making course corrections during the progress of the zoom until the exact point is identified. The zoom ends, the original screen is restored, and the mouse action then occurs.

If my son deselects the zoom function he would then be free to read the contents of the screen without "interference" from the zoom process, and my request is that all text in the non-zoomed screen be 25 point or larger. He would not be reading anything while the zoom mouse is active. I understand that this means he might have to traverse several screens in order to see a whole sentence of help text.

For your second point, I am not looking for just a simple calculator workflow, I want to open up the full power of the tool to my son, whether it be typesetting, entering functions, or even writing programs. I understand that in order to get a cell ready for evaluation that it may take multiple palette functions to enter the data appropriately before evaluating the entire cell's contents, and I see now why the play button is necessary in order to trigger that evaluation. Sorry for my misunderstanding.

Attachments:

2021-02-27 15.52...mp4

Regarding item #1, I believe I've found a link that may help, I'll investigate further : https://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/ConnectToARemoteKernel.html

Thanks for the replies, everybody. I really appreciate your kind interest in my son's development.

1. Could you please give me some pointers on how I can run Mathematica on my resource-constrained PC (using the palettes feature), while running the kernel on my more capable home-based server, with both located on my home network? Would doing this require more than one license?

2. I had a meeting with Andy Giddens (Sales) and Andy Dorsett (Sales Engineer) and they explained I could set magnification settings on a palette to ensure the targets were bigger for my son. They also recommended use of the CreatePalette command. This looks like a fairly complex command, does anybody have any examples on its use (other than the very few examples in the product documentation)? I am a software developer and am a quick study.

3. I looked at the built-in Classroom Assistant palette and although it had some good things my son would benefit from (basic algebraic entry, expressions and equations, navigation, evaluation to name a few), only around 40% of it would be immediately useful. Rather than starting from scratch, I'd love to be able to take a copy of the code that generated this template and cut it down to include only the basics for an early learner. Any idea how to best approach this ?

4. I'm attaching a sample 2d exercise I created to demonstrate to my son's tutor that Mathematica could be used to help my son with his daily work. Any idea why the Graphics[] function did not accept a Rectangle[] object as input ?

Attachments:

Kyram2D_Exercise.nb

I have downloaded a desktop copy of Mathematica onto my home server, this is a big software package, I'm not completely sure it would run on my son's small resource-constrained Tobii I12+ eye tracking computer. I'm quite interested in looking into palettes - I agree, the basic palettes that ship with Mathematica are much too small (typically eye tracking targets can be no smaller than the size of a nickel, and I haven't yet experimented with zoom-dwell-to-click control models with my son that might allow him access to smaller targets). Currently, he is using dwell-to-click against fairly large targets.

A sad piece of news : my wonderful son passed away in my arms on July 31st of this year.

I would be honored if you could join us in the celebration of his life by subscribing and viewing the five videos we have produced : https://forever.link/arbormemorial-kelly-orleans/kyram-dear

This topic remains incredibly pertinent, however, as the lack of an onramp for those with physical disabilities to the Wolfram ecosystem remains a barrier that must still be surmounted.

I strongly believe, more so as I continue to listen to Stephen Wolfram's videos, that having this kind of onramp for those with physical disabilities who rely on assistive technology to perceive the world and interact with it would expose many fine new minds to the wonderful ecosystem Stephen has created. I truly believe we need EVERY voice to move forward to develop this New Kind of Science.

Who is with me?

Thanks, Kyle, I'll take a look at this second draft skeleton. As noted below in my Dec 30 post, any buttons cannot be smaller than 21 pixels by 21 pixels (which will appear five times larger when completely zoomed into with his zoom mouse).