Irisbond
People with motor disabilities mount Irisbond's Hiru eye-tracker on a tablet or laptop to type, speak, and control their devices with eye movement alone when keyboards, touchscreens, and speech are impossible.
ENABLE Model location
What it is
Irisbond is a Basque Country (Spain) company, founded in 2013 by Eduardo Jauregui, that develops AI-enhanced eye-tracking hardware and software for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Its flagship device, the Hiru, is the first multiplatform eye-tracker certified to work on both Windows and iPadOS (MFi-certified by Apple), enabling users to control computers and tablets entirely through eye movement.1 Irisbond also produces the Oskol 2, a dedicated AAC device. The technology serves people with conditions such as ALS, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injuries, and other motor impairments who cannot use keyboards, mice, touchscreens, or speech to interact with digital devices.1
Eye-tracking devices like Hiru function as assistive technologies -- navigator-side tools that compensate when digital products are not designed to be operated without fine motor control.
Why it matters
When builders design devices and interfaces that require touch, mouse control, or speech, they exclude people with severe motor disabilities. The burden shifts downstream: users must acquire specialized eye-tracking hardware to perform tasks that others accomplish with a tap or click. Irisbond's Hiru mitigates this by providing a cross-platform solution, so users are not locked into a single operating system. But the underlying neglect remains: mainstream operating systems and apps rarely ship with built-in eye-tracking input as a first-class interaction mode. This navigator-side compensation addresses abandonment of motor-disabled users by mainstream device manufacturers and precarity caused by the high cost and limited availability of AAC devices.
Real-world example
Irisbond's Hiru is MFi-certified by Apple, making it one of the few eye-trackers officially supported on iPadOS. The company positions this as a breakthrough: "An operating system should never be a barrier. And now, you can choose."1 Irisbond also provides integration tools for third-party companies to embed eye-tracking into their own products, and partners with medical institutions exploring eye-tracking for cognitive health diagnostics and infection-prevention (hands-free device control in clinical settings).1
The company centers its work around real users. Gema, a teenager from Toledo, Spain, became the first child to use AAC with eye gaze in Spain and went on to co-found her own foundation at age 15. Edgar, a dual-degree student in Mathematics and Physics at Complutense University of Madrid, uses Hiru to navigate MATLAB, LaTeX, and social media entirely with his eyes. Dulce, a 12-year-old in Madrid, has used AAC since age 6, progressing from symbol-based communication to predictive keyboards. All three rely on Irisbond's eye-tracking technology for education, communication, and daily life.3 Irisbond frames communication as a fundamental right, citing the Spanish Constitution's Article 20: "We should all have the tools to express how we are, how we feel, to learn, relate and make ourselves understood."3
What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)
Care at the design and development stages involves building eye-gaze input as a default:
- "Our operating system supports eye-tracking as a first-class input method, not an add-on."
- "We test every interface with motor-disabled users who rely on gaze control."
- "We partner with AAC device makers to ensure our apps work seamlessly with eye-trackers."
What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)
Neglect involves assuming all users can operate a touchscreen or keyboard:
- "Eye-tracking is a niche use case -- we'll support it if demand warrants."
- "Users can buy a third-party device if they can't use a mouse."
- "Our app requires tap gestures; we can't redesign for gaze input."
What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)
Compensation describes the labor motor-disabled people undertake when devices assume manual input:
- "I mount the Hiru on my iPad every morning so I can send messages -- something that takes my family a finger-tap."
- "Without my eye-tracker, I can't use my computer at all. It's not optional; it's my only way to communicate."
- "I chose Irisbond because it works on both my iPad and Windows laptop -- before that, I needed two separate devices."
All observations occur within the context of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and assistive technology for motor-disabled users.