I’ve been wanting to invest in a super duper keyboard but the cost, which is also super duper, has prevented me from it. That and Lorna nearly has a heart attack when she sees the prices.
I wrote an article a while back (Alternative Keyboards) for Vision. I pulled that back up today to check out what had changed and were there any new keyboards out there.
There’s the Ergoflex, a three piece keyboard and its positional counterpart, the ErgoMagic. Another three piece is the Comfort keyboard.
The two-piece Evolution keyboard has been on back-order everywhere for quite a while now. Sad, since that’s the one I was leaning toward. The Goldtouch isn’t really a two piece but it does split fairly far apart. Similar to the Goldtouch is the Maxim and the Pace keyboards.
Then there’s the weird shaped ones such as the Maltron, Kinesis’ Contoured keyboard, the very weird Safe Type. The Maltron look-alikes are the Essential, the Advantage, Advantage Professional, and the Classic keyboards. The DataHand looks interesting, although I doubt my small hand would fit it.
Then there’s the one-handed Bat keyboard and Maltron’s one-handed version. There are small keyboards for one-handed use such as the FrogPad, the aptly named Half-Keyboard, and the Half-Qwerty. Oh, and there’s the orbiTouch, a very very weird keyboard alternative.
When I visited my friend Elena the other weekend, I got the opportunity to handle her Bat Keyboard. Ha. It was too big for my hand, especially with my crooked little fingers. The Bat, and most other one handed keyboards, rely on “chording” (just like guitar or piano chords) to select the key you want. I don’t think my hand would be able to span wide enough.
But Elena had a good idea and I am trying it out. She said to get two keyboards and use one for my left hand and one for my right. Duh. So I got two el-cheapo USB keyboards from Cyberguys. Since I touch type, it really is not difficult.
Okay, there, now I am typing with two keyboards. The biggest problem is putting my hands in the correct position when I reach for the backspace or enter keys. It will take some practice to get to my normal writing speed. I am sitting on the couch, my particle board lap tray across my legs. The left keyboard is at an angle to make room for the right keyboard. This hand works the shift key and tab. The left hand does the backspace and enter keys as well as the space bar. My right thumb is the weakest but I just can’t seem to get myself to use the left thumb for the space bar.
I opened one of the keyboards up the other day to see how I could disable some of the keys so that I could lean one on the other. It is easy enough, but I am not sure if I want to do that just yet. When I am net surfing or gaming, I use just one keyboard. When I need to type longer text, I use two. This enables me to position my arms to wherever each needs to be and be independent of the positioning of the other arm.
I should get my new armrest doohickeys Thursday or Friday which means I can get back to figuring out my wheelchair desk. At that point, I will decide if I will disable half of one of the keyboards.
Later tonight I will try to work on my WIP and see what my speed is.