[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

Thu Dec 31 22:43:25 UTC 2009

Hi Lloyd,

thanks for checking in about this and describing your own personal 
experience. Let me assure you that those two keys on the home row have 
tactile markings on them just as they would on any other keyboard, and the 
same goes for the number 5 in the center of the number pad. All that's 
normal, and I think it's been normal across the board for ages, having 
nothing to do with disability issues.

As for marking a few of the F keys because they aren't separated into groups 
of four by spaces, that's a good idea. I have a bottle of that gooey red 
stuff from a blind store, used to mark stove tehmps on an old-fashioned 
rotary dial, etc., and maybe I'll get a sighted friend to carefully apply 
dots to those few F keys, just to help my orientation. There's nothing 
particularly bad about my sense of touch, not in the sense of the kind of 
peripheral neuropathy that afflicts someone with diabetes, for instance. But 
these fingertips are, after all, 65 years old and don't have the springiness 
or sensitivity they did when I was younger, that's true. But not a big 
factor.

Last, I shopped in person at several brick-and-mortar stores with an IT 
professional sighted friend who understood how important it was to me to 
feel each machine's keyboard and touch. But for what ails me here, nothing 
short of a standard keyboard plugged into a USB port would relieve me of 
this learning curve, and that would sort of defeat my hopes of a one-piece 
laptop on my lap.

So, every day, I'm spending time on and off either studying the keyboard 
with the help of the Jaws keyboard help command to get the hang of the 
different laptop layout, and doing a few chores like transferring and 
copying files, stuff like that. It's all tedious and frustrating,but each 
encounter enriches my muscle memory for the task, as one learns to play a 
violin, an instrument without frets, if you know what a difference and a 
difficulty that is compared to something marked.

Your own piece of hardware sounds rather curious and clever. I'm sure when 
the time comes you'll find today's laptops and perhaps even smaller netbooks 
pretty interesting and fun to play with, given your head start.

Thanks again, and Happy New Year.

Joel
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lloyd Rasmussen" <lras at sprynet.com>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

Hi, Joel.

I own a 7-year-old laptop which has no screen, a LapTalk.  My typing is not
as accurate on it as it is on a desktop computer, partly because of the
layout.  When this PC was being sold by Beyond Sight, they glued LocDots
onto the F4, F8, F12 and Enter keys.  It might also be good to put LocDots
onto the F and J keys.  Depending on your tactile sensitivity, you might
want another one on the 5 of the numeric pad or some other strategic
location.  You don't want to apply too many dots, or they lose their
usefulness.

After all this, if I want to type rapidly and accurately, I use my desktop
computer with its more-or-less standard keyboard.  The laptop is still
useful for reading mail, browsing the web, taking meeting minutes and
answering some messages quickly but a little sloppily.  (I edit the minutes
later on a real keyboard).

My LapTalk is near the end of its useful life, so I may be buying something
to replace it in the next few months.  If I do, I'll be certain to look at
prospective purchases in a store, with the most attention being paid to the
keyboard..

Good luck with the learning process.

Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, Maryland
Home:  http://lras.home.sprynet.com
Work:  http://www.loc.gov/nls
www.facebook.com/lloyd.rasmussen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
> Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 3:14 PM
> To: GUI-Talk
> Subject: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard
>
> Hi listers,
>
> Okay, please come clean. I know some of us are totally blind and some are
> partial. I'm partial, myself, but I have no central vision thus can't read
> at all with my eyes. Only with Jaws, recorded literature, and so forth. So
> in dealing with this new machine of mine, which I'd hoped would be a handy
> tool, I'm at a loss.
>
> I thought I'd be able to get the hang of the keyboard with some effort.
> it's
> an Acer with a number key pad so I don't have to learn the Jaws laptop key
> commands.
>
> but still there's no space between the keys and the sections of keys as
> I'm
> accustomed to on a normal keyboard, and no matter how patiently I sit and
> turn on Jaws Keyboard Help to explore and get the lay of the land, so to
> speak, I just am finding it nearly impossible to operate the machine.
>
> Please bear in mind that I'm a pretty damn good touch typist, plus a Jaws
> user from way back with the current release. Ordinary stuff like that is
> not
> impeding me. But try as I might, my fingers just can't figure out where
> keys
> are, except in small, lucky instances and a few keys I happen to have
> taught
> myself by now. I don't think this is gonna work.
>
> I know I can get a USB keyboard to plug into this laptop, then set the
> computer within earshot and sit back with only the keyboard on my lap. But
> this ain't what I'd daydreamed about. I guess I didn't anticipate
> realistically how tough this would be to do blind.
>
> Please just tell the truth, guys. I think a number of you are using
> laptops,
> at least as your secondary computers. How many of you actually use your
> laptops (mine's an Acer PC, for what that matters) normally, and how many
> use an auxiliary keyboard? Am I in a very low-skill class, sort of, if I
> can't figure out how to type on something like this the way sighted people
> do with their own laptops?
>
> Ug. Bummed out. thanks for any helpful feedback.
> and Happy New Year.
>
> Joel
>

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