Eyes only: Navigating hypertext with gaze

Abstract

Eye gaze tracking is an obvious candidate for a future input device, perhaps even for everyday computing. The hard problems with gaze-controlled interfaces are inaccuracy and inadvertent clicking. We attempt to mitigate these problems in the context of a gaze-controlled web browser. Four click alternatives (Dwell, Single Confirm, Multiple Confirm and Radial Confirm) were implemented along with a fifth mouse-controlled version for comparison. Two alternatives make use of additional buttons that confirm a selection made previously by dwell, hence improving accuracy. Our results indicate that the Multiple Confirm alternative performed best among the gaze-based alternatives; it makes use of multiple confirmation buttons when letting the user choose between different options. When compared to the mouse, the clicking times were worse but the accuracy was indistinguishable. User feedback also indicates that, although mouse was considered best, Multiple Confirm was not perceived as slow and generated excitement. This indicates that the Multiple Confirm click alternative has potential as an interaction method for gaze interfaces. © 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.