Can you turn off the mouse with xsetpointer or something? Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to replace the mouse with a touchpad?

The xsetpointer? Dunno? Tell me?

The machine has a touchpad, but I had to turn it off, because otherwise the mentioned device wouldn't work (it emulates a serial mouse). But even then, This little girl -also known as my daughter- has hands and arms which she barely controls, so she smashes them on the laptop every now and then. No problem for the keys (no events are bound to keys), and the display is just far enough away so she can't reach it, but the mousepad is too close...one touch would be too much...

Jouke Visser, Perl 'Adept'

However before doing that I would check to make sure that when the laptop was closed whatever you put there wouldn't touch or be able to scratch the screen.

One last thought... have you looked into voice recognition products like dragon dictate or IBM's ViaVoice. I am not certain if these products are supported for languages other than English, but typically you can train them for at least simple phrases to do basic commands. Even though they may be English products you might be able to trick them into still working. If you could do that you may be able to vastly increase your range of input.

The line of thought is corect, but neither would work:
1. I can't make the internal touchpad (which is detected as a PS/2 device) AND the serial mouse (emulated via the device) work at the same time. Unless you know how of course.
2. Voiceregognition would not be an option since this application will be the voice of my daughter. She selects images and it will be pronounced by the computer for her. She can't speak...

Jouke Visser, Perl 'Adept'