[laptop-accessibility] Touchpad is not accessible friendly

[David K Parker]

Sorry, I thought I made that clear. The trackpoint type pointing device
works very well, and doesn't take up any additional real estate. You can
keep the touchpad as well. Thinkpad offers the best in this breed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:45 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at laptop.org> wrote:

> 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.
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>
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