Stephen Hawking made headlines earlier this year after WIRED UK detailed Intel's three-year-long effort to revamp the famed physicist's speech software. Now that same software is available for anyone with a PC to download.

The Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit, or ACAT for short, was designed to help people with motor neuron diseases and other disabilities to use computers. ACAT operates by picking up visual cues from the user through a webcam and translating those into commands, according to WIRED. The software picks up on movements in Hawking's cheek muscle, for instance.

The open source platform is now available for download through GitHub. However, you have to have a PC running with Windows XP or higher, "and there are no plans to bring ACAT to Macs," as WIRED reports. ACAT is also compatible with various sensor inputs, including infrared switches, cameras and push buttons, according to the software's description on Intel's open source website.

Hawking, who has been living with ALS for more than 50 years, has used software to help him communicate since losing the ability to speak in 1985. Most users probably won't be able to use this toolkit to build software as sophisticated as what Hawking currently uses. That's because this release is really intended for developers to use it to discover new ways that it can benefit those with disabilities.

"Our hope is that, by open sourcing this configurable platform, developers will continue to expand on this system by adding new user interfaces, new sensing modalities, word prediction and many other features," said ACAT's project owner Sai Prasad on Intel's open source website.

The Intel team has already begun testing out ACAT on patients and will partner with universities to experiment with the system soon, according to WIRED.

Via: The Verge