Hacker News Reader

Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

Pardon my curiosity, did you type this on a keyboard by touch typing? If so how do you recognize and correct typos? Or did you use speech recognition? Same question about handling errors.

I'd like to make sites I build more accessible, but I must admit I'm only familiar with the bare minimal guidelines I've read in a couple articles. I don't even know if they're correct or up to date. Nobody I've worked for has ever made this a priority, so I'm quite ignorant on the subject.

View on HN

> Pardon my curiosity, did you type this on a keyboard by touch typing? If so how do you recognize and correct typos?

I'm merely a sighted user here, but I can personally attest that when you've mastered touch-typing, you can tell when you make a mistake and correct it without needing to look at the screen. It is a bit of an eerie feeling the first time you do it.

Full disclosure: I touch-typed this reply, and I made five mistakes when doing so, and fixed all of them without looking at the screen.

I've touch-typed for 20 years and sometimes a random friend (whose job isn't related to computers) catches me doing it and is either amazed or thinks I'm showing off. To me, I'm just typing. Like other commenters, I also self-correct while doing it.

I never learned touch typing, so I was unaware of that. I pick type with both hands without looking at the keyboard, but I have to look at what I'm typing on the screen to know when I've made a typo.

Yes, touch-typing. I feel when my fingers hit two keys at the same time - that's the time to go back and check the previous word for spelling mistakes. And I use screenreader to read things for me.

Just to agree with the other's reply here: I am not blind, but do touch typing. Sometimes I don't even look at the screen or keyboard since I've learned to copy things (Such as a paper I've written by hand). You do get to a point where you develop a "sense of typo" and can simply correct the mistake.

It has its limitations: It doesn't help you spell better, only correct typing mistakes.

Typing class expected me to look at the sample I was typing, not at my own output. Being able to accurately type without looking at your output is a standard expectation for sighted people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com