From gaming with your eyes to coding with AI: New frontiers for accessibility

For Anton Mirgorodchenko, a Ukrainian refugee born with cerebral palsy, supported eye tracking hardware is too expensive, and speech-to-text isn’t an option—it doesn’t understand him. Instead, he uses a physical keyboard, despite his disability.

“Do you know how to type parentheses with one finger?” he asks. “Holding down shift with your nose.”

That hasn’t stopped him. He’s worked as a freelance developer since earning his Master’s degree in Computer Maintenance and Networks in 2012, and recently, he started exploring how to use ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to better communicate and write code. Our emails provided a particular delight, as he likely realized a similar point—not long ago, our communication would be improbable, if not nearly impossible.

“Just imagine: I'm responding to you in Ukrainian and omitting about 60% of the letters from the words, but ChatGPT understands what I am saying and provides an answer in English,” he wrote in an email. He offered an example of how he composed a sentence.

Mirgorodchenko: h m n s Antn, m f ukr. im dev w cplsy.

ChatGPT: I think you are trying to say: "Hi, my name is Anton. I'm from Ukraine. I'm a developer with cerebral palsy.