Save the numeric keypad — don’t trap the MouseKeys!

Once again, a popular technology article is useless to me. This time it asserts that the cursor keys on the number pad have no function. Obviously, it was written by a mouse user. Because you can’t send in letters to their editor anonymously, I am anonymously posting my hypothetical letter here just so I can vent.

Dear Mr. Kurtz,

I always enjoy your “Tech Man” articles. However, I wanted to bring your attention to something you said in “Keyboard makers should delete some useless keys,” regarding the cursor keys on the number pad. For those of us who are physically unable to use a mouse and depend on the keyboard, it’s actually crucial that the keypad and the NumLock key have 2 states. This is because many of us use the Mouse Keys Windows accessibility option.

The most important Mouse Keys setting is that it be active when the NumLock key is off. This way, what controls the blinking cursor for you controls the mouse cursor for us. For us, the arrow keys and the keypad arrows are not identical. If we try to use Mouse Keys when NumLock is on, we lose the ability to enter numbers with the keypad. This is often inconvenient because some of us also use the Firefox add-on Mouseless Browsing, which relies on the numeric keypad for accessing links and fields. Also, users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Windows Speech Recognition make use of the number pad (and Mouseless Browsing) in the same way to write voice command macros.

I mention this because computer designers generally listen more to able-bodied people, which sometimes results in decreased accessibility for disabled people in the name of “progress.” If keyboard designers started making such a change widely across their merchandise, it would make things needlessly less accessible.

Sincerely,

Hand to Mouth

Basic assistive technology etiquette

If you have etiquette tips to add, feel free to comment!

• I can’t believe I still have to say this, but if I need/want help, I will ask for it. It is invasive to help people without asking or waiting for them to ask. Particularly if you grab something away from them.

• Interrupting someone while he or she is dictating is similar to interrupting a phone call. If you need to get my attention, stand in my peripheral vision or tap the desk lightly. DO NOT TAP ME. In any case, give me a chance to say “stop listening” and pause the microphone. If you attempt to talk while standing right beside me, you will likely hang or freeze my Dragon. Being a dutiful Dragon, it will try and fail to understand you (and I won’t be able to kill the microphone), resulting in my inability to work until it finally gives up with an “utterance too long to process” message.

• Do not play with my keyboard. It is not a toy. Most likely, I have emergency AutoHotKey scripts running off a flash drive. Playing with my keyboard will cause odd things to happen. Do not play with my typing stick, or lose it. It is not a toy either.

Why I don’t use Dragon’s “scroll down” command

With either Firefox or IE, if you say “scroll down,” you are taken to the very bottom of the page. Especially with Firefox, I don’t know that there’s a fix for this. Therefore, I just say “page down” or “page up.” Alternately, you can say “move down/up [some number].” “Go down/up [some number]” works also. But to me the movement is too jerky. More often, I just use the Autoscrolling Bookmarklet. (For Firefox, that is; I don’t use IE.) That way, I don’t go hoarse.

However, if you are an IE user, Nuance wrote a perk for you, which they did not extend to the evil stubborn Firefox users. If you use IE, you have auto scrolling commands built in. Look in your Command Browser. (The auto scrolling was not enough to make me switch back to IE for Dragon use; I would rather tinker with settings and add-ons and push for accessibility in order to have a choice of what I will use. Monopolies, even if unintentional, disgust me.)

How to use Windows Mouse Keys

I wonder sometimes if I get ahead of myself. A lot of times I don’t mention things that I think are very basic, simply because I’m so used to them. A case in point: the built-in Windows accessibility options. I frequently mention Mouse Keys, for example, but I’ve never posted on how to set it up, simply because I assume the keyboard user already knows, or has already looked it up in the Accessibility Options.  [EDIT: I have indeed posted the instructions before, but will leave this post up because it's more  to the point.]  However, it shows up in my stats often enough that maybe I’ve been too hasty. So, here are some Mouse Keys pointers.

1. Activate Mouse Keys = left Alt, left Shift, NumLock. (NOTE: you may want to activate the Sticky Keys feature first, if you haven’t already.)

2. Press Alt S, then Alt M.

3. Press Alt S to go into the configuration.

4. Use the underlined keyboard shortcuts to adjust the speed and acceleration of the cursor via the arrow keys.

5. One of the most important settings is whether you use Mouse Keys with NumLock on or off.

A. If you use Mouse Keys with NumLock on to control the mouse cursor, you will not be able to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers. In this setting, turning NumLock off lets you use the keypad to move the blinking cursor.

B. If you use Mouse Keys with NumLock off to control the mouse cursor, you will not be able to use the keypad to control the blinking cursor. In this setting, turning NumLock on will allow you to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers.

6. Use Tab or the shortcuts to press OK, then Apply, then OK.

Cursor movement is pretty self-explanatory — it corresponds to the arrows on the keys. Number keys without arrows correspond to diagonal directions, relative to their placement on the keypad.

Left click = 5

Right-click = -5

Return to left click mode = /

Double-click = +

Drag = 0, then a direction key

Drop = .

Scroll = Page Down/Up (or Space for down)

Click Firefox links with the apostrophe ‘ and Dragon

The auto scrolling bookmarklet prompted me to write this post, but the fix I’m going to describe applies to Firefox globally as well. I said earlier that the bookmarklet’s number key speed shortcuts conflicted with Mouseless Browsing, but even if you’re not using Mouseless Browsing, it also conflicts with the accessibility.typeaheadfind settings in Firefox’s about:config. So, if you say or type a number to finely adjust the speed (you can also, it turns out, just press the + or – as long as you’re not using Mouse Keys), your speed will adjust, but Firefox will focus on where that number appears. Therefore, chances are good you’ll lose your place in whatever you’re reading.

However, there is a way to access links reliably without either typeaheadfind or Mouseless Browsing turned on. Just press or say apostrophe. This will temporarily turn on the accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly setting, and you can say or type your link word, then press Enter. However, you may still wish to go into about:config and turn off the timeout setting if you’re a keyboard user and type slowly.

Compared to having the setting enabled automatically, this is a slightly clumsier process, especially if you have a keyboard on which the ‘ is a shifted key. It would be somewhat more bearable for Dragon users, though, especially if you could create an add-on command. Here is my Vocola command, taken from my list of Firefox commands:

[Click] Link <_anything> = “‘” $1 {Enter};

That was a basic clicking link, but if you want to account for opening a link in a new tab, here is the command:

[Open] Link <_anything> new tab = “‘” $1 {Ctrl+Enter};

Now you should be able to keep your place while you scroll. Also, you might want to use this command anyway, because even though Dragon will occasionally click a Firefox link for you, Dragon itself does not have a way to open a new tab when it clicks something.

Hey programmers! We’re down here!

It strikes me that half the e-mail I get in my inbox is useless to me. All the technological newsletters talk about is Windows versus Linux/UNIX, open source or “indie” software versus Microsoft, and so forth. If you depend to any great extent on speech recognition, you still don’t have a choice. It’s usually Windows and Microsoft all the way, because like it or not, Microsoft is the only one who’s explicitly going to make things accessible for us. (Not everything — see Visual Studio — but more than most.) Many programmers don’t seem to give a damn, or they’re quick to blame everything on Nuance or Windows Speech Recognition. (There are a few exceptions, e.g. Jarte.)

Now, it galls me to stick up for a company whose technical support is rude and/or clueless, and who’s taken to borderline false advertising, but I will say this much: at this point, Nuance seems to have done as much as they can. Compatibility with assistive technology goes 2 ways. Speech recognition can’t work fully with applications that don’t support SAPI. SAPI is the brain, or central nervous system, of speech recognition. Speech recognition can’t run on anything else but SAPI. Supporting SAPI-dependent technology is, like it or not, the other programmer’s job. Also, it looks even worse if the other programmer can’t even be bothered to use general menu controls such as Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) or its successor. MSAA is not SAPI, but it helps a lot when we want to access menus vocally.

Compared to something like screen magnification or screen readers, speech recognition is a newer technology (though it’s been around for quite a while), so I don’t fault programmers for being possibly unaware of SAPI. Also, I am aware that integrating technologies is difficult and takes time. So I don’t fault programmers for saying that it’s difficult, or having to go through quite a lot of trial and error. But from some of the attitudes I see — “Oh, it’s faster for me to just reach over to the keyboard and mouse, why would you need speech recognition?” “I can type 100 words per minute, that’s lazy” — it looks on a bad day like they just can’t be bothered. If compatibility can’t be achieved because of a genuine program-language barrier, that’s understandable and acceptable. But what gets me is that, with so much apathy, there’s no way of knowing whether the problem is that nobody can do it, or just that nobody’s thinking about it. If you’re one of the programmers trying to do something about it, I’m not referring to you, and I thank you.

P.S. I don’t mention Macs because they do, at least, have MacSpeech Dictate — though I hear it’s still catching up to the Windows Dragon. Also, I am aware of the OpenOffice API Project, though I don’t know if they’d have anything to do with SAPI. I am also aware that Linux truly cannot physically support Dragon, as is explained here.

Click Thunderbird links with Dragon

If you haven’t found it yet, here’s a way to click links in a Thunderbird e-mail message with Dragon without using the mouse commands — basically, Thunderbird has a typeaheadfind.linksonly setting too.

To access Thunderbird’s version of about:config, go to Tools — Options — Advanced. Under the General tab, click the Config Editor button. Highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly and press Enter to set it to true. Now, you can say a word in the link to open it — the link will be highlighted, and simply say “press Enter.”

Or, if the link is spelled in such a way that there aren’t any pronounceable words, you can tell Dragon to type a few of the letters, and get the same result. If there’s more than one instance of what you’re trying to say, tell Dragon to press Control G. The link will open in a new tab, at least in Firefox. I don’t know what it does with IE, because it’s been a while since I’ve used it — so long, in fact, that I still have version 6. (I have a feeling I should have upgraded to version 7, just in case, but ah well. I’ll live.)