Hi Jessica,
I work at Apple and have worked closely with the Accessibility team. We always start with a clear understanding of the user's abilities before designing a system to accommodate them. Given that, I'd like to understand what motions or manipulations you would be prefer to use for aircraft control and your relative strength and precision for each motion.
1. Pushing and pulling your feet
2. Moving your knees from side to side.
3. Rocking your feet forward (like pushing a gas pedal) or backward.
4. Twisting your feet left and right (around an axis through your lower leg).
5. Gripping or manipulating controls with your toes.
6. Mouth controls (blow/suck tube)
7. Any upper torso motion?
8. Anything I'm missing?
Once we know which motions you'd like to use for each aircraft control, I have no doubt that this group has the brain power to come up with the modifications necessary to give you that control.
I'd be happy to help in any way I can; I'm close enough to fly down if necessary.
Thank you so much and these are great questions.
1) Push/pull is easy, its the mechanism that's important. A stirrup or strap would make this easiest. Grabbing a bar and pulling would be harder.
2) Knees are useful but I would worry about them affecting other controls. E.g. if I move my knee it might move my foot too if I'm holding on to something.
3) Flexing my foot forward and back is fine. I can probably flex slightly farther than most people but not by much.
4) Rotating my whole foot side to side is also doable. Again, probably more range than most people but not by a lot.
5) I can get ahold of/twist radio nobs, switches, etc. Placement would be important though.
6) Mouth control is an option but not something I'm accustomed to.
7) I have some movement of my shoulders. I've seen turn indicators on cars activated by large buttons at the shoulder. However, the one thing that has worked is the bar extensions from the handlebars on my bike allow me to steer. It is not fine-tuned control for something like the control stick but might be a more appropriate option for activating flaps or something similar.
8 A) Using my toes to rotate dials and nobs doesn't go as far as people's hands. It works best for something incremental like radios. Not something for a primary control, I would think.
8 B) I use my heel to press down on a button to shift gears on my bike. It might be better if you see what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl7wNch4gC4
8 C) I can use my toes on a touch screen. (Including the fingerprint scanner on my iPhone 8
)
8 D) I have a strong grip between my big toe and second toe. I can also use them independently with the other toes decreasing in individual dexterity. I have enough control over my first two toes that I used to use them to put my contacts in.
8 E) There was a time I tried to use a set of buttons behind my head to control the gears on my bike. It didn't work out because I couldn't always tell which button I was pressing and I could never rest my head.
8 F) The fine motor skills and small movements of my feet are as well trained as most people's hands.