[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

[Joel Deutsch]

Hi Lloyd,

I'm aware that there's an area faintly outlined by grooves in the central 
area of that big flat hand rest slab beneath the keyboard area. I knew to 
look out for it just from things people said on lists, and the sighted 
friend who configured this particular Acer for me pointed out exactly where 
it was, disabled it partly in the bios (he's an I T professional, so he 
knows what  he's doing) but warned me to simply keep my hands clear of the 
area, no matter what. So far I've put in hours sitting with this machine on 
my knees and learning slowly to use it, and I've so far been entirely 
successful in avoiding that patch that is the touch pad. I'm not misspelling 
words like that last one, just breaking them up so that Jaws doesn't 
mispronounce them, which drives me nuts.

Thanks for the warning, though. 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: Thursday, December 31, 2009 3:56 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard


The central part of that "hand rest" is probably a touchpad, which acts like
a mouse.  If you haven't already done so, you need to deactivate it and
learn how to deactivate it in the future in case it decides to come back to
life.  Clicking or touching in the wrong places can really mess you up.

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


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 1:08 AM
> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard
>
> Ted,
>
> Thanks a lot for the moral support. I've been putting in about an hour of
> just practicing nearly every day, and I can see that I've begun to
> memorize
> and visualize (a formerly sighted person's habitual way of mapping things
> the little keyboard, and I guess I'm making some progress. I'm still a
> long
> way from my fantasy of sitting back in an easy chair with the laptop on my
> knees and just typing away; even when I get more of the keyboard
> memorized,
> I know I'll probably always be struck by the feeling that it isn't a
> normal
> typist's keyboard. Wrong hand position, and that slab of "hand rest," I
> guess it's thought of, just screws things up if you're a serious typist.
> If
> children were all given their first piano lessons on something akin to
> this,
> not many of them would grow up to be serious pianists, I'm afraid.
>
> But I'll keep working at it and see if I can develop a level of skill and
> comfort that's "good enough," to steal a phrase from psychology. The
> good-enough mother, it was.
>
> Thanks again for the moral support. I was starting to think I was really
> lame. Now I see it's truly difficult, but can be done if you're
> determined.
>
> Joel


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