When the Technology Gets Better

On the Quha zono X and What Assistive Technology Keeps Teaching Me

By Ayoposi Ojelabi · Published: 23 May 2026

I have written before about how assistive technology gave me back the ability to write.

The head tracking device provided by the North West Assistive Technology service, a USB device connected to my laptop with a small sensor attached to my glasses, was the tool that made two books and this website possible. Without it, the words I needed to document this journey would have stayed inside my head, inaccessible, disappearing the way they used to disappear at 3am when I woke with something to record and had no way to capture it.

That device changed everything. I said so then and I meant it.

This week the team informed me they would be visiting to drop off a mount for my existing setup. I assumed it was a routine equipment appointment.

It was not.

The Quha zono X

The engineer who came that day brought a device I had not seen before. The Quha zono X.

He told me it was new. New enough that he had not demonstrated it many times before. We sat together and watched the setup videos on YouTube, the engineer and the patient learning the device at the same time.

Where my previous device controlled one screen at a time, the Quha zono X can connect to up to four devices simultaneously, phones, laptops, and tablets, switching between them through a single control unit. For someone with limited upper limb function, the implications of that are significant. One device, one controller, multiple points of access to the world.

The switching can be done either by pressing a button on the unit or by head gesture movement.

Because of the limited function in my hands, the button is not currently a practical option for me. The head gesture is.

That sounds straightforward. It was not.

The First Day

The engineer explained the mechanism as we watched the videos together. He was patient and thorough. But even with his explanation alongside the demonstration, the device did not behave the way I expected when I tried it myself.

The gesture would not engage. The switching would not register. I adjusted the direction of the movement. I adjusted the speed. Nothing was working consistently.

This is something worth saying honestly for anyone approaching a new piece of assistive technology for the first time. Watching a demonstration, even a good one, even with a knowledgeable person beside you, is a different thing from operating the device independently with your own level of function. The gap between those two experiences can be significant, and it does not mean you are doing anything wrong. It means the learning has not yet moved from observation to muscle memory.

I stopped for the day. The device needed more time than one session.

The Second Day

The next day I went back to it on my own, more slowly.

This time instead of trying to make it work I focused on understanding it. I paid attention to what the device was doing rather than what I wanted it to do. And gradually two things became clear that the videos and the demonstration had not fully communicated.

First, before you can switch between devices, the cursor must be in a static mode. It cannot be moving. The head gesture only registers when the cursor has settled completely and is not actively tracking. That is the starting condition. Without it nothing the gesture does will produce a switch.

Second, the head movement must be clockwise or anticlockwise in a deliberate arc, and you have to listen for the beep. Not one beep. Four beeps. The device signals each stage of the switching sequence with a sound, and you have to hear all four before the switch is completed. If you move too quickly, or stop before the fourth beep, the sequence resets.

Once I understood those two things, static cursor first, four beeps to complete, the device began to make sense.

It is still not effortless. There is more to learn. The movement needs to become more consistent and the timing more natural. But the principle is clear now, and clarity is the foundation everything else is built on.

What This Changes

The previous device was a significant step forward. The Quha zono X is a further one.

Being able to connect to multiple devices through a single controller means the number of separate setups required to access different parts of daily life is reduced. One piece of equipment. One learned gesture. Multiple points of access.

For someone at an earlier stage of upper limb recovery that would mean even more. For someone who cannot control a button at all, which is my current situation, the gesture alternative means the device remains fully functional rather than partially accessible.

That design choice matters. It signals that the people who built this device were thinking about users across a range of functional ability, not only those who can reliably press a button.

What Assistive Technology Keeps Teaching Me

Each device I have used has taught me something beyond its immediate function.

The first head tracker taught me that the words I needed to write were still accessible even when my hands were not. The Quha zono X is teaching me something slightly different, that the technology supporting recovery does not stay still. It develops. It becomes more capable. And as it develops, what is possible for the person using it expands with it.

There is also something worth noting about the visit itself. The team came to me expecting to deliver a mount upgrade and introduced something far more significant alongside it. I did not request a new system. I did not know one was coming. They arrived, introduced a more advanced device, sat with me to learn it together, and left me better equipped than I was before they came.

That kind of proactive care, showing up not because something had broken but because something better had become available, is not something every patient receives. I want to acknowledge it clearly because it made a difference.

I am still learning this device. There is more to understand about the gesture mechanics, the switching sequences, and how to make the movement consistent enough that it becomes automatic rather than deliberate.

But with what I have already been able to do, I can say clearly: this is a more advanced tool. And when the technology improves, what becomes possible expands with it.

The North West Assistive Technology service provides assessment and equipment to people with physical disability in the North West of England. If you are based in the UK and need similar support, your occupational therapist or rehabilitation team can refer you to your regional assistive technology service.