[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

[Joel Deutsch]

P.S.

I just reread yr message, and I hope I made it clear that it isn't simply 
the contrast between this laptop and the particular keyboard on this current 
desktop of mine, on which I'm typing away like lightning. I mean we're 
talking serious touch typing, here, with the typos being mainly because of 
vision loss but in a very subtle sense, not having been somebody who used to 
stare at their keyboard and pick out letters. There's just an extra level of 
accuracy and self-correcting that happens when, even peripherally, without 
meaning to, you can see where your fingers are and see the letters appear as 
you type them. But that's is a minor inconvenience to me compared to trying 
to get the hang of the laptop keyboard, which makes me remember a movie long 
ago of Helen Keller struggling to feel things with her fingers. On a 
computer, my life generally isn't like that, although I've had my fair share 
of bumbling around since my eyes went south, in other situations.

But honestly, it is not just *this* keyboard. it's generically a huge 
difference. I haven't had to struggle going from one model typewriter to the 
next one, or from one computer to the next. Ever. Not a struggle like this. 
This is out of the ballpark.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 5:48 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard


Joel:

This isn't necessarily a blindness thing.  Touch typing is just that,
touch typing.  We become very accustomed to a keyboard, it is
primarily a spacing thing, your fingers are used to the old
keyboard.  You can either stick it out or get a USB keyboard that
suits you better.

Personally I hate the small laptop keyboards, but keyboard preference
is a very personal thing.

Dave

At 02:14 PM 12/29/2009, you wrote:
>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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