Using a computer mouse is almost impossible for people with shaky hands or tremors. MouseCage, a new software application, helps people with hand tremor control their computer mouse. According to its developers, Tunic Software, MouseCage is simple to use, installs in seconds, and requires no additional hardware.

Many people associate tremor with Parkinson’s disease, but there are a number of potential causes including ‘essential tremor’ (ET), degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), trauma, tumour and stroke. In the United States it is estimated that ET alone affects 10 million people, almost 3% of the population.

MouseCage features an unusual dual-cursor. A special guide cursor provides visual feedback by showing the user’s actual hand movements, while the normal Windows cursor takes an average of these movements and predicts where the user intends to click.

Nico Cuppen, co-founder of Tunic Software and one of MouseCage’s developers, explained: “getting two independent cursors to appear on the computer screen proved quite a challenge. At first sight it might seem a straightforward thing to do, but up until now it has been regarded as a pretty unusual thing to want to do!”

Another innovative feature of MouseCage is its ‘cage’ key. When users are near their intended position for clicking, they can ‘cage’ their mouse by pressing a user-defined key on their keyboard or mouse. When caging is activated, overall mouse movement is drastically reduced to allow fine control. As a further refinement, if the cage key is pressed a second time, cursor movement stops altogether so that users can click in their own time.

According to Nick Allen, co-developer: “The cage key allows you to take tight control of your mouse on demand, and our trials have shown that people find the caging concept both intuitive and empowering. There is a degree of satisfaction in hitting that cage key and finally getting the mouse to slow down.”

While some conditions result in an almost constant tremor, there are also intermittent types. MouseCage deals with this by employing a tremor-detection feature that switches the computer between normal operation and MouseCage driven operation depending on the operator’s pattern of hand movements. Nico Cuppen explained: “Even with MouseCage running, a person without tremor can use the mouse virtually as normal. Because the cage key and other functions are also designed to work in non-tremor mode, all users can take advantage of these features if they need a little more control.”

At present MouseCage is available for Windows 2000/XP. For further information, or to download a trial version, visit www.mousecage.org.