Mouse Keys without a keypad: MouseGrid for keyboards

Usually (when using my keyboard), I only resort to Mouse Keys when there’s a noncompliant link or button on a webpage, that can’t be accessed by tabbing or typeaheadfind.linksonly in Firefox. Generally, these links and buttons tend to be large targets, and waiting for the cursor to get to the top of the screen to click a header, for example, can feel slow. I was thinking it would be nice if there were a way to jump the cursor to a rough area of the screen, so that reaching the target would be quicker with less holding down keys. So I went looking for one, and found MouseGrid. [Link at end of post]

MouseGrid is freeware that can be operated by both the numeric keypad (NumLock ON) and the regular number and punctuation keys. That makes it particularly useful for those using laptops or other keyboards without number pads, particularly if their Fn keys are not sticky. Those keyboards aren’t conducive to even using Mouse Keys, making MouseGrid a welcome alternative option.

MouseGrid does not install itself into any directory, and doesn’t show up in the Add/Remove Programs menu — it installs itself to wherever you’ve told your browser to download files. In my case, Firefox put it on the desktop. It doesn’t need to stay there; you can pin it to your start menu or copy and paste it into Program Files or whatever you want. Its lack of trace makes it good to copy to a flash drive, too. When you highlight the icon and press Enter, you will receive a warning about running the software. Before you tell it to run anyway, for your convenience, uncheck the box about always showing the message.

MouseGrid then appears on your screen as a 9 square grid, which is numbered according to the numeric keypad. Therefore, the uppermost left corner is 7, 2 is the bottom center, and so forth. Pressing those numbers will jump your cursor to that area of the screen, and the grid will shrink. If you keep pressing numbers, you will gradually zero in on what you want, and pressing 5 will click it. If you press F1 after the grid appears, you will see which clicks correspond to which keys — be aware that some are different from the Mouse Keys assignments. A particularly nice touch is that holding down the number keys will make MouseGrid mimic Mouse Keys; that is, you can press a key to get to the rough area, then hold one to go the rest of the way instead of having to keep narrowing the grid. Mouse Keys with a boost, basically — much faster.

I do find having to have Caps Lock on to keep the program active is annoying, particularly since if you exit when you don’t want to, there’s not really a smooth way to bring it back up. (NOTE: This doesn’t mean you can’t turn off Caps Lock temporarily to type text or something.) Pinning it to the start menu takes the fewest keystrokes, or you could create an AutoHotKey script and avoid the problem altogether by assigning an unused key or keyboard shortcut the job of bringing up the application. For example:

Pause::Run, C:/Program Files/MouseGrid.exe

The AutoHotKey approach is especially recommended if you always want to have the program running in the background just in case. Highlight the script icon and press Control C, then go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Press Control V. Your script will now be pasted into that folder and will start automatically when you boot your computer, so that all you have to do is press the key whenever. MouseGrid can be downloaded here.

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

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.

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.)

Typeaheadfind: Click Firefox links with Dragon, without Mouseless Browsing

As I’ve said, Dragon 10 and Firefox have gotten to the point that you can say a word in a link to click it, but this only works maybe 60% of the time. (That just seemed like the appropriately lukewarm number to describe the programs’ half-assed interaction.) I’m not sure why. Luckily for us, there’s a workaround. Well, 2, if you count Mouseless Browsing. But this workaround is for those who may dislike Mouseless Browsing for whatever reason — this one is built into the browser.

Go to the address bar and enter about:config. Go there. First, highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind. Its value will probably be false. Press Enter to set this value to true. Then, highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly. Press Enter to set this to true.

This allows you to dictate any part of a link as long as it’s a pronounceable word. So if you say something and Dragon doesn’t click it, no worries — Firefox will highlight in green what you’ve said, and transfer the keyboard focus to it so that all you have to say is either “go there” or “press Enter.” It’s different from Mouseless Browsing in that depending on the words you use, there might be duplicates, and Firefox will focus on the 1st instance so that you have to say “press Control G” until you get the instance you want (or create a Vocola or KnowBrainer “find again” command if you wish). To open a link in a new tab this way, say “press Control Enter,” and to open it in a new window, say “press Shift Enter.” Between this workaround and Dragon 10’s own spotty ability, I barely notice the seams anymore. (Though if Mozilla ever decided to do some research and actually make Firefox SAPI compliant if that’s possible, I certainly wouldn’t complain!)

Tabfocus: Access Firefox text fields etc. with Dragon

While Firefox is not seamless, the Mozilla developers have indeed at least been meeting us halfway, though perhaps unintentionally as many programmers are still woefully ignorant of speech recognition requirements. I just didn’t know it, because they don’t describe their accessibility options well at all. Bah.

While Dragon and Firefox have approached a level of semi-civility when it comes to clicking links (provided the website is compliant), one of Firefox’s main obstacles to navigation remains the inability to use commands like “click checkbox/radio button/text field.” I don’t know if that will change anytime soon, because Firefox’s user interface is written in JavaScript, which is a difficult language for some assistive technologies to play with. This is why so many people have been using the Mouseless Browsing add-on — it provides a way for us to vocally access the link, checkbox, field, or button by telling Dragon to press the corresponding numeral. However, a lot of people dislike using Mouseless Browsing because for them, the numbers clutter up the page. If you’re one of these people, Firefox has a few options built in that should make it a lot easier on you.

Unfortunately, these are not obvious unless you’re comfortable with about:config, which is Firefox’s skeleton key in terms of customizing its default behavior. Go to the address bar and enter about:config, and go there. If you get a message about voiding your warranty, ignore it.

You’ll see a bunch of entries that begin with “accessibility.” The one that pertains to accessing fields and boxes is called accessibility.tabfocus. Contrary to what I first thought, this has nothing to do with the number of tabs you can have open at once. You’ll see that it contains an integer value, probably 7. Highlight it and tell Dragon to press Shift-F10, which will give you the context menu for that option. Choose Modify, because you need to decrease the number.

Anywhere from 1 to 3 is a good number — nothing above that. These numbers restrict where your cursor focus goes when you press the tab key — it limits the tab key to finding lists, text fields, and buttons/checkboxes, in the order in which they appear. If you set it to 1, saying “tab” will put you into text fields only, and you say the tab key until you get to the text field that you want. Usually this is only a couple of times. If you set it to 3, you can access any field, list, box or (compliant) button, repeating until you get to the one you want. Again, the repetition isn’t usually excessive.

I know this method isn’t perfect compared to just zeroing in on whatever you want, but I think it’s a pretty decent workaround. Next up is a way to access links without mouseless browsing enabled.

Vocal and keyboard autoscrolling in Firefox: Woohoo!

I’m still a little peeved at Nuance for breaking their middle click command, and likewise a little bit puzzled at the Mozilla developers for making such a useful function as auto scroll exclusive to the mouse. A lot of people who can’t use the mouse — be they Dragon users or keyboard-only users or both — don’t feel like writing their own voice commands or AutoHotKey assignments or what have you. Not for what is supposed to be a basic native Firefox function, at least. What about that standard that says all functions should be accessible from the keyboard, huh? While computer users with disabilities do have to take more responsibility for finding things out themselves, it baffles me that programmers can’t even meet us halfway sometimes. The more function you have built into a program, the safer you feel, because — well, what if your add-ons stop being developed or something? You get the idea.

However, after much frustrated googling, I am just elated. Whether you are a Dragon user or keyboard user, you can now auto scroll any page without using a mouse command. Tim Harper, a.k.a. Tim the Enchanter, has written a bookmarklet that does just that — loads a JavaScript for auto scrolling into any page you’re on. All you have to do is go to his page, and save the humongous Autoscroll link into your Bookmarks Toolbar using the mouse commands (for Dragon), but that’s the only time, I promise. (The toolbar method is mainly for Dragon users because Mozilla hasn’t made the toolbar itself keyboard accessible.)

If you are a keyboard user, you need to use Mouse Keys (sorry, tabbing to the link doesn’t seem to work, or least I can’t see it being highlighted) to right-click over the link, and choose “Bookmarks Menu” for the location. That’s more efficient because it makes your keyboard shortcut more fluid: Alt-B-A. Done. (Of course, you might have to press A more than once if you have bookmarks that start with the same letter. For efficiency in selecting, it might be a good idea to de-clutter your menu, either by deleting old bookmarks or putting them into a folder.)

Tim lists the shortcuts for increasing the speed on his page, but please note — since we’re probably all using Mouseless Browsing, the number key shortcuts will conflict. (However, we can by all means still access links and fields via Mouseless Browsing with no problem.) Stick with the Control-Shift-+ or Control-Shift– shortcuts, and you’ll be fine. If the default speed is too slow for you, you can edit the script to adjust it. To do this:

1. Go to Organize Bookmarks under the Bookmarks menu (Ctrl-Shift-B).

2. Choose either Bookmarks Menu or Bookmarks Toolbar, depending on where you put the bookmarklet. Then, highlight Autoscroll from the results side.

3. Look at the Location field. Instead of seeing a web address, you will see the script itself. With either voice or keyboard, go to the Location field and press Control-C.

4. Open Notepad. Press Control-V. You will see the script in full.

5. On the 2nd line, look for ss_speed=1. Once you find it, change 1 to about 3; that’s middling at least. Then, select and copy the document via Control-A Control C, and go back to your Bookmark Organizer.

6. Go into the Location field again if you’re not still there. Press Control-V. This will paste the adjusted script.

7. Now, whenever you say “Autoscroll” or execute the keyboard shortcut, the page will scroll at the speed you want.

Tim’s script can be found here. Enjoy!

Typing Assistant 4.2

Typing Assistant is now 99% perfect — the makers are good listeners. Version 4.2 is now totally keyboard accessible, and everything else in my previous review still applies. Thank you programmers!