Credit the invention of the BT Balance to Adam Oliver’s mother. Oliver, head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Age & Disability Research, at BT’s Group Chief Technology Office, loves stories with a social heart. He works out of the headquarters of BT (formerly known as British Telecom, the UK’s rough equivalent AT&T) in London, UK.

The BT Balance is an adaptor that lets the user navigate around the screen of most computers by slanting the computer left or right, up or down. Forget the mouse. Lose touch with the touch-pad.

“The idea came from the personal frustration that my mum had with computing,” he says. “If I told her to start a program, click here, she’d just glaze over. The challenge was to design something so simple that even my mum could use it. I wanted something that anyone could use without complicated keystrokes,” Oliver continues. “We wanted to create something that would respond to your movements.”

Whether because of the environment where you work, or because of a disability, if you ever have wished you could get a new slant on using a computer, BT Balance might soon be the thing for you.

The BT Balance is a USB device that also can connect to a network with a standard cable dongle (although it is more likely to be used with a USB on a portable laptop or tablet computer).

The actual BT Balance unit is a bit bigger than a Zippo cigarette lighter, only with rounded edges.

The accelerometer in the BT Balance uses a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) chip from Analog Devices to track user’s activities, says Dave Chatting, researcher in the Broadband Applications Research Centre, BT Group Chief Technology Office which is based at the company’s Adastral Park research labs near Ipswich, UK. Both the finished accelerometer and the MEMS are from Analog Devices.

“A single device measures rotation in two planes,” explains Chatting. The unit tracks front/back and left/right motion.

Chatting says they are looking at the possibility of a three-axis accelerometer in the future. This would give them the third dimension.

According to Oliver, the BT Balance is intuitive for most users, and lets them manipulate files in their computer just as they would the pages in a book, turning and tilting to see different pages as they refer back and forth.

There are real advantages for those who are unable (or simply too unsteady) to use the finger pad for manipulating the cursor around on a laptop. An aging population is going to have a lot more people with Parkinson’s or similar issues that make a touch pad a problem to move slowly and accurately. Dyslexics do away with the problem of having to read screen instructions, by simply pointing or tilting the unit. Stroke victims have real challenges with reconnecting hand or finger motions and their brain’s commands.

Some reviewers have panned the idea that the unit might be of use to someone unable to use a standard mouse, feeling it would be is simpler to push a mouse around than to manipulate a whole computer. Either they are too young to have arthritis or they have not talked to their grandfathers or grandmothers. Seniors often get bad cramps in their hands when doing any repetitive motion or motion that requires smaller movements (which is why they like Velcro for tightening up their shoes instead of the traditional shoe lace). Being able to twist and turn is a lot simpler than having to clutch a mouse – where’s your hand right now: on the mouse? Older people just can’t do that well.

Besides that, tablet computers often are used in the field. And a gizmo like the BT Balance would be a real boon to a civil engineer, say, who wants to take notes on a construction project as he walks along a highway that is under construction. Likewise, a field force engineer would find such a unit handy for measuring forces from data entered. Simply tilting the tablet computer to and fro allows access to different documents or spreadsheets.

No price tag has been placed on the BT Balance yet. Oliver says they would like to see it on the market within the next 18 months.

To see the BT Balance in action click here  for a BBC video clip.