Paralyzed English Man Becomes First Person to Tweet With His Eyes

Seven years ago, Tony Nicklinson suffered a major stroke that left him with a condition called “locked-in syndrome.” The 57-year-old’s mind is as sharp as ever, but his body is completely paralyzed and he is unable to speak.

That hasn’t stopped him from tweeting, though.

On Wednesday, @TonyNicklinson sent out his first message via Twitter, employing a special computer that uses eye movement technology to understand which letters he wants. This was his first-ever tweet:

Hello world. I am tony nicklinson, I have locked-in syndrome and this is my first ever tweet. #tony

— TonyNicklinson (@TonyNicklinson) June 13, 2012

@TonyNicklinson has picked up nearly 5,000 followers since his first tweet. It’s not Friday yet, but you might want to #FF him now before he heads to court on Monday to argue that a doctor should be able to end his life.

Nicklinson says his life is “dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable.” He is seeking to have a medical professional end his “indignity.”

Want to see how he tweets? Watch this clip via UK’s Channel 4:

Channel 4′s “Dispatches” will air a segment on Nicklinson on Monday.

Locked-in syndrome was also the subject of a 1997 French memoir by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine. After suffering a stroke in 1995, Bauby woke up 20 days later with locked-in syndrome. Using only the blinking of his left eyelid, he dictated an entire book over the course of 10 months to the world’s most patient transcriber, who recorded his 200,000 blinks and turned it into “Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon,” which was then turned into a film called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Bauby died of pneumonia three days after the book’s 1997 release.

[Gizmodo / The Daily What]