hands-free computer users

I seriously love the blog Hand to Mouth: Assistive Technology (hand2mouth_feed). He is an infrequent blogger, but blogs primarily about being a mostly-handsfree computer user, and I've learned some great tips from him (not least from his "Dragon NaturallySpeaking tag").

A while ago he wrote a review of the LightIO touchless touchhad, and I ended up buying it for work. I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it really is touchless -- there are sensors that can see your finger above the surface of the touchpad, which makes a big difference for me. On the other hand, in the touchless mode it's pretty hard to control, and I don't think I will ever be as deft with it as I am with the normal touchpad. But on the third hand (she said, channeling Tevye), the fact that I'm not as deft with it discourages me from using it, which means I'm in a lot less pain at the end of the day. Social engineering of a sort.

In any case, I have it plugged in at work where sometimes I just really do need to use a mouse, and it is slow and clunky and the pain but doesn't actually hurt me, so all in all it's a net win.

I was fiddling around with the options for the Firefox mouseless browsing add-on (which I adore, by the way; it attaches typeable or dictateable numbers to every selectable link on a webpage, and to every Firefox tab), and discovered a nifty trick. You can make a key binding for "blur". Now, back before I started doing JavaScript coding for dreamwidth, I had no idea what "blur" means, but now I know that it means "leave the currently selected element).

My biggest frustration for years with mouseless browsing has been that if I am in some kind of form field-- this dreamwidth post entry form, for example -- dictating any of the numbers for a form means that I am just typing into the form field. But now that I've discovered this option, all that has changed! I made a mouseless browsing keyboard binding for "blur active element" (I chose control + alt + shift + B), and then a meeting NaturallySpeaking macro that, in Firefox, attached is that key binding to the word "blur". Now, if I'm in a form field, all I have to do is dictate "blur", and the selection leaves the form and lets me dictate numbers again!

Still doesn't work for flash, sadly. Once I am in the controls of the Flash element the only way to get out of it is to use the mousegrade. But still, it's a huge win.