A friend of mine sent me an Acer Iconia A100 tablet (16 GB) and stand for Christmas hoping I could use it; he’s a big Android fan. (Also, he felt bad that the Lilliput touchscreen didn’t last very long.) I’ve never used anything but Windows desktops, so I am gingerly figuring things out as I go. Of course, before I could do anything much, I had to find out how accessible it was.

Before I did anything else, I wanted a stylus so as to spare my index finger. So far I’ve cursed every stylus I’ve tried, from a generic to a BoxWave to a Pogo. Maybe I just need practice, but they all seemed simultaneously over and undersensitive, particularly when typing. I felt like someone stubbing out a cigarette. Either the letters wouldn’t register or I’d get a string of them when they did, with or without a screen protector. So far, though, I’ve had some dubious luck with the Pogo Sketch. I kept that one.

First thing out of the way: Android speech recognition is horrible and not meant for continuous input. So I really wanted a good keyboard, preferably one with word prediction instead of completion. It took a bit of scrolling through the Market results for “keyboard” and some trial and error. Luckily, you can get a refund within 15 minutes of your purchase. The best, if not the only, predictive keyboard I could find was the SwiftKey Tablet X. It costs $4.99, but there’s also a trial version. It’s well worth it for me. Since I need wide keys to hit the letters accurately, I am usually in landscape mode, and being so careful makes my typing even slower. So anything user friendly that reduces distance is much welcomed.

SwiftKey is multilingual and can support three languages simultaneously. I have English and Spanish. The keyboard detects the language automatically, but even so, I rarely have both active at the same time; I prefer to switch between them manually since I write in English more often than Spanish.

They talk a lot about their split layout, but there’s also a standard straight layout, which I of course use. The most efficient single finger or stylus layout is QWERTY, but there are also two thumbed Dvorak and Colemak layouts accessed via the tiny keyboard next to the language in Settings.

Layers underneath the letters make the keyboard extremely functional. To get numbers and common punctuation symbols, hold the letter keys. (You can adjust the duration in the settings.) To access a numeric keypad, touch the 123 key. There you will also find a #!? key, which will give you access to emoticons, symbols, and so forth. (If you want to go straight to that key, hold 123.) If you’re using another language dictionary, there’s an option to show foreign characters. If you want to access quick emoticons, hold the Enter key.

There are three large prediction keys at the top of the board, for both words and punctuation. The predictions are based on common word combinations. It will learn new words unless you check “Spacebar will always insert a space” in the prediction settings. To use a new word, touch its key. To delete any word, hold its key. If you choose, you can accept the highlighted suggestion with the spacebar. To erase the last word entered, flick your finger across the keyboard right to left. (This requires enabling gestures .) The prediction keys will also sometimes show possible autocorrections as you type, but these are unobtrusive and occasionally even helpful. In fact, you can see all kinds of prediction stats in the settings. Perhaps the best feature is the ability to clear the learned data every now and then, and start the predictions fresh.

I also tried Perfect Keyboard, but it was completion rather than prediction, and the choices were very small and hard to hit; you can’t enlarge the choices the way you can the keys. However, it could be useful if you use a lot of abbreviation expansion, which SwiftKey doesn’t yet have. I tried the SlideIT keyboard too and found it interesting, but it’s still completion rather than prediction. Also, sliding is harder with a stylus.

As assistive technology, the SwiftKey itself is wonderful. I hadn’t expected to find quality word prediction like that. Over the course of a week or so, I used SwiftKey to write this review, then my desktop to edit and post it.

However, other than this review, I don’t think I’ll be using the tablet to do any kind of long writing or serious work. My most reliable input device is still Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Even though I have good word prediction with the SwiftKey, typing with a stylus is unreliable so far. I had to use my index finger to type reliably, which is why it took so long; I had to be careful to avoid twitching and joint pain. It’s not hopeless, though. The tablet does have other uses, which I’ll detail in a subsequent post.

I’ve written before about how to change the auto scrolling speed/length in Dragon 11 using the Mouse settings in the Control Panel. However, if you only use auto scrolling for reading pages in Firefox, there’s an add-on that does the same thing and isn’t as choppy: Yet Another Smooth Scrolling, which works with Firefox 9.

YASS deals with the scroll wheel and the arrow keys, both of which Dragon can handle since its auto scrolling is just repeated turns of the scroll wheel. In the main settings, you can adjust the step size, smoothness, and acceleration. Under the more advanced options, you can set which keys you want to perform smooth scrolling: Arrows, Page Up/Down, and Home/End. All of these can be selected at once. There is also a blacklist, where you can put websites you don’t need smooth scrolling in.

The default step size is about 60, which is something like three lines (though I don’t know if that has anything to do with the mouse wheel settings in the Control Panel). When I say “start scrolling down,” there is no jerky pause between scrolls the way there was without the add-on. (Without the add-on, Dragon’s auto scrolling was a little bit choppy even though I had checked “use smooth scrolling” under the Firefox options.) It’s much easier on my eyes.

Be aware, however, that your step size will also affect your arrow keys if you choose. This means that if you say “go down two,” for instance, you will potentially go down farther than two lines. However, if you only use it for the scroll wheel, it should make auto scrolling in Firefox much easier.

Note: Unfortunately, even with this add-on, saying “scroll up/down” will still take you to the very top or very bottom of the page. You’re still better off speaking the Space or Page Up/Down keys.

After Google Scribe went, so did a source of free multilingual word prediction. So I went looking for another one. I forget how I found it, but I did find one: Virtual Keyboard.

Virtual Keyboard is part of a freeware assistive technology project from the University of Lleida. It was made to complement their Head Mouse freeware, but it works with any pointing device or click switch. It has three access modes: mouse click, adjustable dwell click (called “time click”), and adjustable XY axis switch scanning (called “sweep click”).

The dwell time can be as low as 100 or as high as 5000 ms. Because the keyboard sizing choices are a bit clunky, you might need to play with this a little. Interestingly, when you dwell over a key, Virtual Keyboard puts a red square on the key to show you where you left off. You can use dwell over every key except the ones relating to keyboard settings. You will need to be running your regular dwell click software as well in order to activate those keys.

The keyboard layout itself is a bit bulky and could use a more visible font, especially when shrunken. The keys are arranged in the QWERTY pattern for various languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese and French. Note, however, that it only comes with three default prediction dictionaries: English, Spanish, and Portuguese. If you want one in your language, you can create a new dictionary. Program messages are only available in English and Spanish.

IMPORTANT: There is no frequency of use layout. You can try activating one-handed Dvorak in Windows if you want to, but this will really confuse the keyboard and render the prediction useless because the keyboard thinks you’re typing different letters than you intend; it doesn’t recognize the substitution.

The prediction acts more like completion at first. That isn’t too bad, though, because the dictionary contains common words for the most part. If you want your word choices to be more predictive, you can turn on the learning mode by expanding the keyboard (click the sideways arrow) and clicking the dictionary above the number pad until the padlock disappears. Then, the keyboard will order its choices based on what you’ve already typed.

If you want to control the dictionary prediction without turning on learning mode, you can tweak it by feeding it a text file containing words and phrases on separate lines. So, if I wanted to make sure “are” was offered after “they” or “you,” I would type two lines: they are / you are. And so on, then save. Click the wrench, then Dictionary, then feed the dictionary your phrase file. After that, the order of your predictions should stay in place.

In addition to the learning mode and not-learning mode, the prediction function controls one more thing: macros. To set up macros, click the wrench at the top of the keyboard, then click Behavior. Check Special/macros. When you click Configure and set up a profile, you can record macros to appear in the prediction keys as well as the function keys. You can open programs or websites or paste text strings. To operate the keyboard in macro mode, click the dictionary key until the little S appears over it. Then, your macros will appear. Be aware that if you operate the keyboard in macro mode, you will not be able to use word prediction.

The keyboard has a number of other useful features, such as the “delete word” key. If you click that key, then dwell over the word you don’t want, it will be deleted. There is also a “clear” key by the text window of the keyboard, so that if you reset what you’re typing if you want to go back and edit something, the prediction won’t get its order out of place. There are also keys for positioning the keyboard at various points on the screen. If you right click the magnifying glass key, you have a choice of a few different keyboard sizes. Be aware, though, that the smaller you make the keyboard, the harder it is to see the letters on the keys.

I strongly suggest looking at the manual that explains what key does what; this would be a very long post otherwise. All in all, though, I think it’s a worthy multilingual keyboard that, once a couple bugs and error messages are worked out, could compete with commercial keyboards. (You can usually ignore the error messages, by the way.) There aren’t nearly enough resources for those who need to write in more than one language without paying through the nose.

The other day I found the poem that the linguistics professor showed me the day I tried to explain how I read – what written language was where I come from, how beautiful it was, like having a ghostly second set of senses. The poem was indeed Seamus Heaney, because it jumped out at me when I saw it: “Blackberry Picking.” I didn’t read it only for the senses of the letters; that wonderful ghostliness has faded a little. (Or a lot – at this point I have to wonder if what’s been going on has killed the alphabet too.) I read it because I needed to remember, again, when someone tried to see as I see. He couldn’t read the way I could – the words didn’t do the same thing. But he found me a poem and tested it out so that he might understand at least a little.

I didn’t know him nearly as well as I knew some of the other professors, and yet there was that. And yet he was the one to say, of his relative and of me and the whole you plural of people like us, “You deserve help from the world.” I still think “help from the world” is the best phrase anyone gave me to describe the part of disability that no one talks about: the intangible, invisible, abstract, communicative – the human. On human:

I remember the professor who broke the page count for me so that I could communicate via the papers I handed in each week. Who gave me an introduction to disability politics because xe knew something about it. Who saw me unexpectedly sick with god knows what before I could hide, my voice gone and my limbs and head spastic until the spasms brought sobbing from my eyes and chest as more spasms, who watched me hand xyr the assignment that was due that week after I had slackened. Xe was staring at me as I held out the paper.

Xe was horrified.
Xe was also, inexplicably, grudgingly, grinning.
“Shades of that thereof,” xe said, and quickly pursed xyr lips. By that xe meant stubbornness. By that xe meant xyrself, too, xyr own. Resilience. Fight.
It was good company to be in.
Ess, I whispered. Yes. Hell yes. And I left, and got the paper back next week as ever and the week after that.

I need, now, to remember that. Today the last of the past few months and their henchmen, which had worn on my body for a while even longer, caught up to me and twisted me and tripped every ugly nerve and bone as if to gloat for one last time, just before I could say it was over. It’s gone now. But it left so much damage, on me, between me and other people, that it nearly stupefies me with grief. And maybe I should let it, just once more just now, because I know from here on all I’m going to have is the That Thereof.

I was proud, once, of the That Thereof. And now I will need every unquantifiable bit of it I have in me, because there’s nothing else now. I’m thankful, almost unbearably, that my That Thereof was first named a good thing by someone who knew what it was. I didn’t grow up around disabled people, nor was I much included (in spirit) with nondisabled people. But college was my safe home, and there I raised myself as one because there were others. And some of them even helped me along, even as stunted as I was – not just stunted because of my body or brain but because of where I grew.

So now I have to take the gift of my shared That Thereof, which made me an equal that time instead of an outcast, and start over. I’m still stunted, but it will have to be enough. But at least I have a tool with which to do it, because there were helpers in the world then. Here’s to anybody with the great That Thereof – happy belated International Day of People with Disabilities. Disabled Persons. Disabled People. You know what I mean.

You have the option of letting the keyboard learn as you type. Considering the inability to delete words, this could both help and hinder. The text window does not track where you are in your document, so if you go back to edit something, the keyboard sometimes adds a long garbled “new word” to its dictionary. That, or your prediction order gets a little scrambled.

There is no auto click; if you want to dwell over the keys, you will need to use the “repeat with movement required” combination in Point N Click.

You can shrink the keyboard, and the font will remain bold enough to be visible, which is very nice.

Right now, the keyboard is too rough for everyday use. However, it is promising and would at least make a good last resort in an emergency.

But after all that, I realized something I should have realized a lot earlier: if Dragon can’t hold down keys, then even if it could recognize the names of the direction keys, it couldn’t necessarily send them properly in order to generate steady mouse movement. Head, desk, and duh.

I guess it’s a relatively small thing, and I’m trying to be lenient with myself lately, which is not easy. I’ve had a medically and financially horrendous time of it lately, and while I’m not entirely out of it, I think it has lessened somewhat and so I’m trying to recover from the stress while I can, before the next thing happens. I’ve decided that the only way I can conceptualize this kind of stress is in terms of relapse and remission – hang on as hard as you can through the relapse, and concentrate on making the most out of your remission without letting the possibility of relapse hang over your head. For the most part, I can do that medically. It’s just a matter of making that analogy work for other areas of my life.

The cuff and grip are fine, and the Tornado is worn down on the heel side and faded at the toe, but still has some tread on it. (I will be changing it around November if not sooner, though, in preparation for the coming weather.) The spring is working well, even after I got caught in walking through a downpour or several.

The only noticeable changes are in the paint; it’s a bit chewed near the tip in front, likely from scraping against uneven drops or weather-and-root-or-bad-design-created “steps” in the sidewalks. There are faint powdery rings in the paint by the collets for the leg and cuff tubes; I suspect that will only be noticeable (and barely at that) when I wear my boots, since I adjust upward by 1 inch. Even if the collets are tapping on the paint, I don’t think they can dent the metal. If I’ve created any nicks or scratches by falling, I can’t tell. (Though we’ll see what happens when I’m walking after heavy winter weather! Maybe I’ll get tube socks.)

A quick note on cuff sizes, particularly if you don’t have a lot of forearm flesh: my default setup is the small 3 inch cuff, covered with a half-inch of Crutcheze padding. I had kept the original 4 inch cuff because I thought I would need it in order to wear the crutch over my winter coat. Fortunately for me, it turned out I can keep the 3 inch cuff on; all I have to do is remove the padding. If I need it, depending on how thick my winter clothes are, I just put the padding back on once I’ve taken off my coat.

It turns out, though, that there is actually a form of Solitaire called “Beat the Devil,” which I’ve never played. I have played a version like the one in Windows, though, and it totally slipped my mind that I could do that by voice.

Solitaire is accessible by the Enter and arrow keys, as well as F2 for a new game. “Mouse double-click” works well for aces. When you start Solitaire, you can say “Go (right | left) <number>,” and the mouse cursor will move that number of spaces until it’s positioned over the card you want to move or turn over. (Each card, including the deck and the spots for the aces, is a space.) To turn over a card, click it or press Enter. To move a single card under another card, say “press Enter,” then “go <direction> <number>.” Then press Enter to drop the card. To move a pile of cards, “go up” before you press Enter. If you find an ace, double clicking will move it to its slot. Double clicking cards of the same suit will move them on top of their aces.

I say “cane” rather than “crutch” or “stick” because the forearm support isn’t even an open cuff. Rather, it’s just another bend in the cane, so that the whole thing is basically an offset cane with a broad curve at the top. The Standard, or Slim, model has a 3″ opening, which doesn’t seem to curve around the forearm. Rather, as far as I can tell, part of the back or side of your arm just rests against part of the curve.

But — and maybe I don’t get the point of open cuffs, or I’m too bony or weak or something — that meant the cane didn’t move with me. It moved away from me, which felt really unstable. If I stepped forward with my arm, as I do with my stick, my arm lifted away from the support, which made it awkward to swing. I had to guide it with my hand only, and since my arm was away from the support, there was extra metal dangling until my step touched down. That made my swing waver, which meant that I couldn’t place the tip securely upon touching down. When the step completed, my arm did press back down against the tube, but the effect was lessened by the wobble in the cane’s landing. Also, the pressure of my bone against the tube was very uncomfortable, despite the bit of foam padding; it was a rather hard, narrow point of contact.

There were a few times I could get the cane to stay closer to my arm as I walked (staggered?), which felt a little bit more supportive, but it required more tension and concentration than it was worth. I couldn’t relax my arm into a step; I had to hold my forearm stiff and grip the handle tightly as I moved my arm forward — it felt like from the shoulder. The handle is the same hard foam cylinder as on any offset cane, and not angled as I had mistakenly thought from some of the pictures. When they called the grip ergonomic, I think they must have meant it in the UK sense, despite being based in the US. After a few minutes, my fingers were fizzing quite hard, bordering on numb, and some finger joints got sharp. There was a pinching feeling in the cleft at the bottom of my palm and mild burning at the side of my wrist; I think it woke up the occasionally subluxating tendon.

I don’t know; maybe if you don’t have hand problems or if you have more forearm flesh, the Strongarm would be a fine cane. It’s certainly interesting-looking, I’ll give it that. But it requires too much exertion for me, and if I’m having a spell and can hardly move, I don’t want to lean on something that hurts and/or is likely to throw me off. My crutch fits like part of my arm once it’s padded, in comparison. After this, I’ll gladly wear it across the room as well as outside or anywhere else.