Thoughts When Trying the NeuroNode Trilogy System for the First Time

Hi everyone! My name is Emma and I'm 18 years old. I have a disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy type 1, which basically leaves me completely paralyzed.

I have always relied on assistive technology to live my life to its fullest. I am currently in my third year of college at Liberty University and the only way I am able to do this is through assistive technology. Right now to type I either use my adapted mouse pad and an on-screen keyboard, or I type with my Eyegaze system. Both ways of typing tire me out very quickly and are very difficult to get set up perfectly. When I heard about the NeuroNode Trilogy I was very interested in how it could potentially help me with this issue. I was a little concerned that it would not be able to pick up my muscle movement because I can barely move at all, but when I got to try it out for the first time I was very surprised at how sensitive the technology was to be able to pick up my tiniest movement in my hand. You can easily adjust the sensitivity to pick up the littlest movement possible, all the way up to the biggest movements and everything in between. I don't even have to try hard to activate it to select, which was really surprising to me as I usually have to put in a lot of effort to get other assistive switches, devices, etc. to work at all! This made using the Eyegaze so much easier for me! When using the Eyegaze without the NeuroNode, to select a button I have to stare at the button for a eloted number of seconds before it selects it, which tires out my eyes very quickly. This makes getting my school work done very difficult to complete because I need to take so many typing breaks to rest my eyes. When I use the NeuroNode with the Eyegaze, this problem completely disappears and I am able to type without any of those issues and I can type much faster because of this!

I no longer get tired because I use the NeuroNode to select what I want instantly instead of staring for several seconds to select what I want! The NeuroNode Trilogy System is by far the most thought out assistive technology device that I have ever seen. Overall, I am very excited to get my own because I think this could make life much easier for me!

Sarah CrawfordNovember 18, 2019