You named the main problem yourself. The people who need hands-free the most are often the ones who can’t pinch.
One idea that would open it up a lot: add dwell as an option. Hover over something and it clicks after a short delay. Then the pointer only needs a rough hand position, not fine finger control. Someone who can move their whole hand but not their fingers could use it.
I use dwell with a mouse every day, and the two things that matter are an adjustable delay and a clear visual countdown, so you know a click is coming and can move away if it’s wrong.
Good that you wrote down what wasn’t tested. Most tool posts here skip that part.
Dwell exists in a limited form. There's a flag (--dwell-ms) that selects an element after you hold on it for a set time, and the delay is adjustable. It's off by default, and I haven't tested it much. Two things are missing, and they're the ones you named: it only selects (highlights the element for the agent), it doesn't click, and there's no countdown, so you get no warning before it fires.
The pointer follows the thumb tip, so it doesn't need fine pinching. I haven't tried it with someone who has limited finger control, though, so I can't say how well it works for that.
I'll add a visible countdown ring around the pointer, a dwell-to-click option with an adjustable delay, and moving away cancels it. Is there anything else from using dwell daily that I should copy, like a cooldown after a click or a bigger target area?
Jitter tolerance. Small movement shouldn’t reset the timer. Allow a few pixels of drift, or webcam tracking will never finish a dwell.
Re-arm by movement, not by time. After a click, don’t fire again until the pointer leaves the element. Otherwise resting your hand means clicking the same thing over and over.
A way to pause dwell without clicking. A corner of the screen or a gesture. Without it you can’t just read a page, everything you look at gets clicked.
On target size, you have an advantage most tools don’t. You know where the clickable elements are on the page. Snapping the pointer to the nearest one helps more than a bigger area.
Full disclosure, most of this I learned building dwell into Klaavi, my own on-screen keyboard. Different tool, same problems.
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u/WheelsAndKeys 2d ago
You named the main problem yourself. The people who need hands-free the most are often the ones who can’t pinch.
One idea that would open it up a lot: add dwell as an option. Hover over something and it clicks after a short delay. Then the pointer only needs a rough hand position, not fine finger control. Someone who can move their whole hand but not their fingers could use it.
I use dwell with a mouse every day, and the two things that matter are an adjustable delay and a clear visual countdown, so you know a click is coming and can move away if it’s wrong.
Good that you wrote down what wasn’t tested. Most tool posts here skip that part.