Communicating for the first time

Shooting Star Children’s Hospices are giving children a way to communicate with their loved ones for the first time. Eyegaze is a life changing piece of equipment that Children are able to use when visiting the Hampton Hospice.

The equipment allows children with limited mobility to control a computer by just using their eyes.

Children can paint pictures, play games, write and communicate by tracking the child’s eye movements enabling them to move the cursor. By using Eyegaze, children who struggle to communicate with their family and carers are able to do so – often for the first time.

Eyegaze is not the only new piece of equipment at Shooting Star Children’s Hospices. Another new piece of equipment is the POD tent, a mobile and sensory pop-up tent that offers room for every child, irrespective of their abilities. Coming in a handy rucksack, making it portable, the sensory tent allows the user to enter a calm and happy virtual world where children are surrounded by colourful images, and they can listen to built-in calming music and stories to enhance the experience.

Other items include the Magic Carpet, a wheelchair accessible piece of equipment that projects interactive themed animations and images onto the floor; and the Tilt and Touch Table, a large touchscreen that can, as the name implies, be tilted for every child, no matter their needs, to play and create with.

Shooting Star Children’s Hospices received this life-changing technology from children’s charity Lifelites.