[laptop-accessibility] XO keyboard

[gabey8 at aol.com]

 Highmarks! That's the thing I was drawing a blank on last night, when I was trying to remember the name of it! I've seen that used before -- I have a few deaf-blind friends who've had high-marks dots applied to the controls of their microwave oven, stove, etc, to make them tactile.

If the high-marks will cooperate by adhering to the membrane, that might be a good idea.

Whatever is added, it has to stick to the membrane, be large enough to be tactile, and be SMALL enough not to be knocked askew when the XO case is closed.

In the days before home row keys got little tactile dots on them as a matter of course, one of my friends took a braille label maker and labelled the F and J keys. On keys as narrow as the ones on the top of the XO keyboard, maybe a braille label trimmed down to just one dot, applied over each of the keys, would stay put. I was surprised at how much those labels can withstand -- we signed my friend's cast with braille labels after his ankle surgery, and those labels stayed put until the cast was off. :-) If the adhesive could survive being on a cast, I would hope it would remain in place on some keyboard function keys that probably won't get as much heavy use as the letter and number keys.

How do those ideas sound as a short-term solution (until the keyboard membrane itself can be adapted)?


 


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-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Gorse <mgorse at mgorse.dhs.org>
To: jg at laptop.org; Discussion of accessibility on the OLPC <accessibility at lists.laptop.org>
Cc: Walter Bender <walter at laptop.org>
Sent: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 10:46 am
Subject: Re: [laptop-accessibility] XO keyboard










Thanks; filed as ticket 5859.

Donna, it's a good question what would work as far as markers go.  I have 
some dots lying around the house somewhere (they're called Highmarks or 
something similar), but I didn't think to look for them last night and try 
to mark the XO.  It would be good to figure out what works, though, since 
it would help with existing hardware.  And I use a screen reader (although 
I can't do anything with the current XO image).

-- Mike Gorse / AIM:linvortex / http://mgorse.freeshell.org --



 


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