Assistive Keyboards

Yes. Using coloured keys to help enable recognition there are keyboards which can be a boon to a user that suffers with Dyslexia.

With a design based on guidelines from The British Dyslexia Association here is a good example

Yes. We have a variety of options. Feedback suggests that a yellow coloured key with nice bold black print is the best aid to visibility.

• This is an inexpensive keyboard which serves as a good example

They do, if you are working in the dark. But the best thing for your eyesight in general is to work in a well lit space.

If your eyes are constantly adjusting between the dark corners of the room, the brightness of your screen and the small bright spots on your keyboard, it adds to eye strain and potential damage to your eyesight. It is also related to added fatigue and headaches.

Yes. Keyboards like this one

They use larger keys, 1” square. And have larger print too. With vowels, consonants, numbers and punctuation all picked out in different colours.

However, I do believe that children take to keyboards more easily than us adults and starting them off on a different keyboard to those they will encounter further down the line may be a retrograde step.

Maybe we should call this the silver surfer keyboard?

This is a very challenging problem and the best solution from the keyboard world at present are keyboards with a grid like ‘guard’ added of the top of the keys providing a surface that one can rest the hand on and move to the correct key with some support. Pressing the key is then achieved by pushing down through the holes in the guard.

A keyboard with larger keys can also help.

This is an area that could be much improved and at present the convenience provided by word recognition is probably the superior option.

The world of technology moves fast and I am aware that some designers are working to improve the options available so it would be nice if one day soon I can update this.

This is a problem we hear a lot. I sometimes suffer the same but working on my touch typing helps.

There is an added challenge with the fact that low profile keyboards are very popular and they accentuate the problem because the keys are flatter.

All keys on most keyboards have the same space afforded to them such that all the keys we use are able to fit onto the area of the keyboard. So a flatter wider key makes the spaces in between keys smaller. Increasing the chance that one would hit the adjacent key by mistake.

Older styles of keycaps tended to be more angular (pointy) such that the top surface is smaller and the gaps between the keys is larger.

• This Lofree keyboard shows how close the keys are on low profile models, albeit a great keyboard in other respects
• And this Pro4 from Das Keyboard uses the more traditional type/shape of key
• In extremis one could choose to use a ‘large key’ keyboard like this one