Apple’s products have always had excellent accessibility features, and the company itself has done a great job at it, but there are other companies and researchers across the industry developing innovative new ways to use the iPhone and iPad to improve accessibility.
New York-based Synchron is working on computer brain implant technology that would allow patients to control an iPhone or iPad with their brains, Semafor reports.
According to the report, Synchron currently has six patients using its “Synchron Switch” device, which is surgically implanted in the patient’s brain. Synchron is the first company to receive FDA approval for a “clinical trial of a computer brain implant.
Tom Oxley, Synchron’s co-founder and CEO, explained that the skills required to implant the sensors are “common. The sensor array made by Synchron called the “Stentrode” is inserted into the top of the brain through a blood vessel during minimally invasive surgery. The skills required to implant the Stentrode are common, and that level of simplicity is key to the company’s business strategy, Oxley said. Implanting the device directly into the brain requires neurosurgery, a discipline that is short on doctors.
One patient currently using the Synchron Switch through an Apple device is Rodney Gotham, a retired software salesman from Melbourne, Australia, who had the device surgically implanted in his brain at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Gotham, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, relies on his iPad as his primary means of communication, and the Synchron Switch works by translating Gotham’s thoughts into input actions on the iPad’s display, reporting that when he “thinks about standing on his feet, his iPad records it as a tap of his finger on the screen “.
For now, Synchron’s research is still in the early stages, but the company is considered to be well ahead of its competitors. The report notes that Apple itself is working on similar technology, funding a team at Carnegie Mellon University to study computer-human interfaces.
