Windows 10 to get native eye-tracking controls

Windows 10 will soon enable users with severe neurodegenerative diseases to use various devices powered by Microsoft's operating system. For now, eye-tracking is available in the latest Insider Preview build, so it should become available for everyone by the end of the year. However, it all gets down to the eye-tracking hardware supported.

This technology introduced by Microsoft is called Eye Control and was inspired by the Eye Gaze Wheelchair project. This project won the One Week Hackathon internal Microsoft event that took place in 2014. With its help, Steve Gleason, a former NFC player affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), was able to move his wheelchair by employing custom software running on a Surface tablet.

Thanks to Eye Control, Windows 10 users will use eye-tracking hardware such as Tobii 4C to perform actions that would normally require a keyboard and a mouse. For now, this feature is still in beta stage and its hardware support is rather limited. Please check the video below for more details.