[laptop-accessibility] Touchpad is not accessible friendly

[Seth Woodworth]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:18 PM, David K Parker <davparker at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not really speaking out for myself, but trying to raise the awareness
> level of people developing technology. No one seems to realize that there
> are disabled people with no hands, but can otherwise function fairly well
> with prosthetic limbs. I'm not as concerned about companies like Apple, who
> make devices that don't work without human fingers, because there are many
> other companies making competing devices that do work just as well or
> better. The laptop for every child project is different. They are trying to
> provide technology to children that have no other choices. To alienate a
> small percentage of those who have lost limbs for various reasons beyond
> their control seems wrong when a simple solution does exist. Adding an
> external mouse will work, but makes the device harder to use. You need more
> surface area to operate, chords can easily be broke, or the mouse can be
> lost. Building a pointing device into the laptop that works without
> requiring skin is the obvious solution. The technology does exist.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>

Please offer suggestions as to what technologies you would like to
see.  I don't want to be dismissive of our user's needs here, but I do
not know of any technologies that would be suitable and cost effective
to put into every laptop.  All of the devices that I can think of
would greatly lower durability and/or increase cost.  But I don't know
a lot about the field.  What have you seen that you think would work
well?

Also, software aids are a real possibility.  Because we're such an
open platform, we can get access to hardware at a very low level.
What software aids would you consider a priority?  We have the benefit
of the great majority of linux software, which has excellent support
for alternate input and accessibility.