On Monday evening, May 8th, 2017, my will to live reignited when I discovered Sesame Enable while visiting their booth, which their US representative, Shai Eilat manned at a disability expo. Sesame Enable is a tracking software made by an Israeli company that was founded in 2007 by two extraordinary people: Giora Livne, a veteran Israeli Naval officer who became a quadriplegic during an unfortunate accident, and Oded Ben Dov, a brilliant and extremely kind computer programmer and developer and a team of a highly motivated and energetic of engineers.
Sesame Enable has been and continues to be a lifesaver for me at every second, moment, and day of my life. I don’t know where I would be if not for Sesame Enable; it gives me back some of the privacy, independence, and autonomy that I so abruptly and unexpectedly lost at such a young age. Sesame Enable is not just a way to control your phone, tablet, and computer; it is a crucial tool that improves and enhances its users’ mental health and well-being. And maintains their sanity; I can personally attest to that!
Let me share what Sesame Enable is, why it is so important and means so much to me, and why it will always remain near and dear to my heart. And I will do everything I can to ensure it will always be available for everyone to access, use, and benefit from. Sesame Enable is a webcam-based head-tracking software that allows people who have difficulty using their hands and voices to control their phones, tablets, and computers with slight head movements. These slight head movements mimic all the movements that one usually does with one hand, i.e., clicking, double-clicking, right-clicking, scrolling, restarting your phone, and more.
For over 11 years since my surgery in 2006, before discovering Sesame Enable, I was struggling a lot with accessing and using my laptop and phone. I used my pointer and middle fingers of my left hand to type and navigate them, but I encountered many problems, like not reaching the right side of the screen and inadvertently touching the wrong part of the screen with my palm. In addition to constantly bending over to get my phone on the table, my face was always on the table, hurting my neck and impeding my breathing.
In February 2016, when I was released from rehab after two months in the PICU after a bout of pneumonia and RSV, it became increasingly difficult and impossible for me to use my laptop and increasingly difficult for me to do anything meaningful or constructive on my phone. The only action I could do was to scroll, so I scrolled through Facebook all day. I tried to voice my concerns to my family, but when I did, my family said that I shouldn’t complain because I could use my phone, so I didn’t try to elaborate or explain the full extent of my struggles. In retrospect, I should’ve tried harder, which I genuinely regret.
In June, I suddenly became fragile and could not move my hand at all. I didn’t know there were ways to use the phone and computer, not with hands, and my family didn’t understand the importance of independent computer access, which is crucial to one’s communication, independence, autonomy, safety, and more.so I sat and watched TV shows all day for a year to keep myself busy. At first, it was fun and exciting, but it became boring and unbearable after a few weeks. I constantly had headaches, and my mind became like mush from not being adequately stimulated. (I still feel the effects today years later.) I was severely depressed, didn’t have a reason to want to keep on living, and was contemplating suicide. I kept searching for a solution, but it was difficult when you couldn’t reach out to anyone for help and my family didn’t give a damn about finding someone to help me.
Finally, in May 2017, I discovered Sesame and the wonderful people behind its birth. It has been a lifesaver for me ever since and continues to be every day. My mental and emotional health and well-being have drastically improved, and I no longer wish that my life would end already.
Sesame is so precious to me that it sustains and keeps me going like a person needs oxygen to live! It is more important to me than my ventilator. If Sesame were a physical product, it would be the first thing I would save in case of fire. You may think I am being emotional and overdramatic, but I am not! I am speaking from my own bitter experience. I attribute all of my achievements, successes, knowledge discovery of the many helpful products, incredible opportunities, and connections to many wonderful people to Sesame Enable and their generous founder, Oded Ben Dov.
Sesame Enable has shut down in 2019 due to not being a sustainable business. Still, it remains available and free for everyone to use because of the generosity of its founder Oded Ben Dov. Oded is looking for someone to help upkeep and further develop Sesame Enable, if you would like to help enable computer and phone access for severely disabled people, please contact Esther [email protected] and Oded [email protected]