1. Virtual Keyboard Guidelines for Single-Switch Access
Katherine Jamieson
CMPT 480
Fall 2016

2. Justification Virtual keyboards are not physical devices
Some people have severe physical disabilities preventing them from being able to use a physical keyboard
Some people have so severe physical disabilities that they can only manage to press one button, or blow air into a straw
Single-switch access support in a virtual keyboard gives these people the means to interact with the the system the keyboard is on

3. Analysis
Started by determining how existing on-screen keyboards support single- switch input
Tried to determine what is required for single-switch access and what areas of guidance is needed

4. Analysis – Major Sources
P. E. Jones, "Virtual keyboard with scanning and augmented by prediction," The 2nd European Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies, Proceedings, vol. 1, pp , 1998.
C. E. Steriadis and P. Constantinou, "Designing human-computer interfaces for quadriplegic people," ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) , vol. 10, no. 2, pp ,
Image of keyboard design from ”Virtual keyboard with scanning and augmented prediction”

5. Implementation Organized research Expand upon quotes and partial notes
Turn sections into guidelines
Create examples for guidelines
Example of my quotes notes page

6. Implementation Continued
What Worked
Starting writing based off of the research quotes
Having defined categorizes to work in
Problems
There was a lot of ideas
Overlap between topics

7. Results
Set of guidelines
Including:
Scope
Definitions
Examples

8. Scanning Scanning methods Re-scan and skip scan Scanning speed
Scanning indicators
Starting scan
Selection indicators
Screenshot of the WiViK keyboard currently scanning rows. Second row different colour.

9. Keyboard Arrangement and Customization
Keys
Keyboard Layout
WiViK frequency layout
Windows 10 QUERY layout

10. Modifier Keys, Navigation Keys, and Macros
Modifier key examples.
Features shift, control, alt,
command, windows key
Navigation key examples.
Features home, page up,
page down, end, up, down,
left, right

11. Prediction Character prediction Word prediction
Example keyboard with predictive features
at top of keyboard highlighted

12. Accessible Help
Accessible help
Help symbol

13. Conclusion and Recommendations
More work is needed
Areas of guidance that could be more refined and expanded
Areas that were not considered
Focus is very much on a computer virtual keyboard
More work is needed on the guidelines
The areas of guidance that are included can be more either more refined, or expanded upon
I keep coming up with more areas that could use guidance, that I was unable to include, didn’t find enough information for, or didn’t think of until too late. Even as I was making this presentation I was thinking of things that should be rearranged, re-worded, and added.
The focus of the document is very much focused on virtual keyboards for computers, but what about other devices such as mobile keyboards?
I am not an expert at this and experts would be needed to evaluate these guidelines and work to make them a solid set that could be used.