Today's applications and tools exclusively rely on mice and keyboards and use them a stereotyped way, and are still ignoring any other interaction paradigm. Though importance of input adaptability has been widely recognized, its issues have been very little studied. We propose a new input model based on input configurations. In this model, input devices are freely connected to applications through adapters, and traditional event mechanisms have been replaced by a reactive data-flow paradigm. Using this model, we developed the ICON (Input Configurator) input toolkit, which allows to build interactive applications that are fully configurable and that can make use of alternative input device and techniques. With its visual editor, developers can rapidly create by direct manipulation configurations for impoverished or enriched input. Power users can then customize those configurations to suit their specific needs.
Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Input devices, Interaction techniques, Adaptability, Accessibility, Post-WIMP interfaces.