HELPFUL ACCESS. Georgia Tech's new device should help kids with fine-motor impairment to use tablets. Screen grab from YouTube

MANILA, Philippines - One of the problems with technological advances is that accessibility becomes a factor for enjoyment of new devices like tablets.

A new development at Georgia Tech, called Access4Kids, is working towards helping disabled children with controlling touch-based tablets.

Access4Kids aims to help those with fine-motor impairment to better control tablets. It is a "wireless input device that uses a sensor system to translate physical movements into fine-motor gestures to control a tablet."

The Access4Kids system uses 3 force-sensitive resistors to measure and convert pressure into control signals on a tablet.

As the news piece from Georgia Tech explains, "A child can wear the device around the forearm or place it on the arm of a wheelchair and hit the sensors or swipe across the sensors with his or her fist. The combination of sensor hits or swipes gets converted to different 'touch-based' commands on the tablet."

Its developers, professor Ayanna Howard and graduate student Hae Won Park, hope that Access4Kids can be fine-tuned and made into a commercial product.

As Howard explains, "It doesn’t make sense for me to have one child look at it and say ‘Hey that’s really cool’ and not have it out there in the world." - Rappler.com