[blindkid] braille keyboards and such

[H. Field]

Hello Richard,
I've not seen the braille keyboard simply because I thought it was a 
bit pricey and decided I could label my own. I had thought of trying 
it for one of my little blind students. I thought as an introductory 
activity it might be really helpful to have a brailed layout as some 
people, and I'm about to start teaching a student who is such a 
person - really benefit from reading and memorising from reading. It 
is much easier to read and memorise than to learn just from hearing 
and doing alone.
I also wondered about finger position. I thought that it might be a 
good introductory experience but, I was a bit concerned that for fast 
typing one actually uses the very tips of the fingers with the wrists 
nicely raised. To read the braille one needs to have flat fingers. I 
haven't actually started teaching this little girl but am about to and 
had decided that I might mark the home row of keys. I learned to type 
in 7th grade but I do like to still mark some keys on the key-board. 
These include the function keys, alt, control, shift, enter, delete, 
equals, the brackets. This is because I never use them enough for 
hitting them to be such habit like the other keys, so I want to be 
accurate when I hit them.

I wonder if having Kendra make up an echo song might be fun? She could 
sing a key that she intends to press and could then press her key of 
choice - or the one she thinks it is - and see if the computer 
"echoes" her. It could be fun for her to see how quickly the computer 
echoes her. Just a thought. I'm going to try that with my little 
student.

If you decide to try the key-board with braille on it please let us 
all know how it goes.

Warmest regards,

Heather Field