Tablet interface for the physically disabled?

Question

My sister has Cerebral Palsy, which in her case means she has only gross motor control and her speech is slurred. Implications should be obvious: traditional computer/phone/tablet interfaces won't work for her and she can't speak clearly enough for speech recognition software to help her at all. She enjoys reading but has difficulty holding the book and/or turning a page.

There are a few options for helping her use a computer, but nothing for tablets or eReaders.

That's where you come in. I would like to make (or buy, if such a thing exists) a better interface to an Android tablet that would work for someone with little to no physical dexterity or speech ability. I'd also be interested in work on the Kindle or iPad, but I'm most familiar with Android so I'm starting there.

I know Android has Bluetooth capability. Is it possible to interface a joystick to control the Android device? By "control", I mean the entire operating system - selecting an app, launching it, controlling the menus, etc. I want to give her control over the whole thing, not just a specific app. On a PC this can be accomplished by creating a generic USB HID interface and an arcade joystick to move the mouse over the screen and click on thigns. Is it possible to do something like that in Android?

Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: After further research it seems that remote control from a PC is actually possible, but requires the phone to be rooted. Is there any way to do this without modifying the phone? Ideally I'd like to install my simple app and control the unit remotely (through a PC would be fine, but direct control through Bluetooth would be better). Thoughts?

Answer 1

What kind of movements is she capable of? I mean is touching completely out of question, or something like oversize stylus made to work with capacitive screens would suffice.

Answer 2

There are new options on the market now - TECLA creates a switch enabled interface that allows the user to use one switch (or more) to access the entire Android system, and it is quite effective.