It started with a blink. Then another. And another. By the time Jang Ik-sun had finished his master’s thesis, he had typed tens of thousands of words – one blink at a time.
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For the 37-year-old South Korean student, who has lived with muscular dystrophy for decades, the achievement was years in the making, and nothing short of extraordinary.
Jang earned his master’s degree in social welfare from Gwangju University on February 23, with the help of cutting-edge eye-tracking technology.
“Receiving a master’s degree alone means a lot, but it was an even more meaningful day as my thesis was recognised for academic value,” Jang wrote in an Instagram post where he shared the triumph.
Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of five, Jang has spent most of his life fighting a disease that slowly robs the body of its ability to move. By the time he began his graduate studies in 2019, he could no longer rely on his hands to write or type.
It was a process of moving forward by overcoming my limits
Instead, he turned to an eye-tracking mouse, a device that translates eye movements into digital commands. Every single word of his thesis was painstakingly typed one blink at a time.