A Systematic Review on Methods and Techniques for Optimizing Assistive Virtual Keyboards

Locked-In Syndrome is admittedly the worst case of motor and speech impairment, seriously damaging the ability of oral and gestural communication of patients. In recent years, alternative and augmentative communication technology has provided resources to restore these patients´ ability to communicate. Among the various methods and existing communication software, we can highlight the virtual keyboard. However, the data entry for these keyboards is considerably slower than entering information through physical keyboards. In order to identify the main approaches employed to optimize the data entry on virtual keyboards, we performed a systematic review by searching for papers in databases. As a result, we found 250 articles and selected 31 papers among them to compose this research. Analyzing these articles, we identified five methods for optimizing data entry performance and 15 ways of implementing them. In addition, this review contains a critical analysis regarding the optimization methods and assistive virtual keyboards.