Good Monday to you one and all. As I reported to the group last week, I recently purchased a new case for my BrailleNote® Touch. Out of necessity, that means removing the physical Braille keyboard which is, for some odd reason, part of the case that HumanWare ships with the Touch.
So, I’ve been playing around with the virtual keyboard, and I’ve discovered why I’ve never had much luck using it. Unfortunately, the problem was a fundamental misunderstanding on my part of the way the keyboard works. As I understood it, once you calibrated the keyboard with your ten fingers, you could type Braille anywhere on the screen. That is not the case, in point of fact. And this became clear to me during my experimentation over the weekend. The keyboard works by the software assigning the area of your ten fingers as the virtual keyboard. Ergo, if you touch the screen right at the top, then that’s where the keyboard is calibrated. If you place your fingers in the centre area of the screen, then that is where the keyboard is calibrated. Typing, once you’ve understood this basic fundamental concept is a breeze! You just need to use your first three fingers of each hand as dots 1 through 6, your little finger on the left-hand is the Delete button, the little finger of your right hand activates the Enter key and the thumbs of either hand are used as the space bar. So, as long as you choose your preferred keyboard location with care, and make sure your fingers land on that area of the screen, you’re fine. If, however, you take your hands away from the screen to perform some other task, you then have 2 options. Either simply re-calibrate by placing your ten fingers on the screen and lifting them when you feel the short vibration, or else, as I’ve discovered, if you place your wrists in exactly the same place in relation to the way you calibrated it, you can simply resume where you left off. The trick is to position your wrists on the corners of the screen and, I have found, that works as a reliable guide. Navigating menus etc. is still easy. It can be accomplished using first letter recall, or via the thumb keys on the front of the tablet. So it looks as though I have said bye bye to the physical Braille keyboard, and finally, I’ve found a reliable silent way of note taking. ======================================== My compliments and kindest regards Gordon Smith: <[email protected]> Accessibility & Information Technology Support Specialist.. This Message Was Created Using 100% Recycled Electrons. If you can avoid printing it, please do so. Think of the environment, save a tree! Contact: Twitter: @maciosaccess • UK Free Phone: 0800 8620538 • UK Geographic / Global: +44(0) 1642 688095 • UK Mobile/SMS: +44 (0)7804 983849 • Vic. Australia: +61 38 82059300 • US/Canada: +1 646 9151493 ----------------------------------------
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