Appreciating accessibility with a broken collar bone | Hacker News Reader

Appreciating accessibility with a broken collar bone

erresen.github.io

46 pointsyaszas18 comments

I don't think I've ever used them personally, but this is exactly the use case for "sticky keys" -- being able to press and release the modifier key (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) and have it remain "active" until another key is pressed. It's an available option on Win, Mac, and should be there in most Linux distros as well.

But that said, I definitely agree with the author that making your keyboard shortcuts customizable is a very useful accessibility feature. IMO it should be a standard feature. Should be standard for video games too, although there are still a great many games that do not let you remap buttons.

Funny I broke my arms a couple months ago and wish I had known this. I put two keyboard on my desk and was incredibly annoyed when I found out I could chord keystrokes together across keyboards.

this is really where uhk.io shines.

Easily programmable, multiple layers, easy macros, absolutely wonderful. I wish they made a mouse.

Short-term and long-term disabilities really really change methods which people interact with the technology.

One pathway most people forget is their voice. Smartphones have caught up with dictation through voice but not in voice control. iOS has made some headway.

For personal computers I use the following project to augment my workflow by voice.

https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster

Tangentially, I did not fully appreciate the usefulness of pinch/zoom resizable web pages until I was recovering from eye surgery. Sites that did not allow the page to be resized (on my phone) might as well have been blank.

I don't understand why all of the mobile browsers still allow sites to prevent zooming. It makes no sense.

Broken collarbone sucks. Did the same thing as a child, in pretty much the same way.

Long after, I've got a psoriatic arthritis: one hand and forearm may be painful to use for a few days, it comes and goes and will be right side or left side (but not yet both, knock wood etc).

I spend a lot of time using emacs, i only have a few keyboard shortcuts custom mapped and use fewer of the defaults than i used to. Now I'm more likely to use menus or command auto-complete, that's quicker than trying to remap the finger reflex, which i'll be able to use again in a few days.

"There's more than one way to do that" can be a real blessing when you're not sure what you'll be able to do from day to day.

A programmer friend of mine broke his arm dirt biking. We took an old Kinesis Freestyle and mounted one side to a tripod with a ball joint. We were able to turn one half of the keyboard on its side so his wrist did not need to face down, which was impossible. It worked out pretty well from what I remember.

Also worth noting, I think most Kinesis keyboards have hardware key remapping. The Advantage definitely does. It's wonderful to not need to rely on software to get your keyboard to do something unusual.

Thanks for the comments. It’s good to hear I’m not the only one who’s suffered this. I ended up writing most of that blog post on my phone as it’s actually more comfortable to type on at the moment than my keyboard.

I’m getting better though. I think I’m 4 weeks in now. I have better mobility and can type two handed for short periods. I’m not looking forward to the potential future complications though. Arthritis is not something I want so I’ll discuss with the doctor at my follow up in a couple of weeks.

Having a second Alt key on the right side (instead of AltGr) is one of my favourite features of the US layout in contrast to UK. I just don't get why some keyboards implement an Fn key instead of another Super key on the right side either. It's just bad keyboard design IMO. A good keyboard should provide Shift, Alt, Super and Ctrl on both sides of the keyboard. It may then add Fn and Menu keys in addition, the spacebar would still be big enough.

Many international keyboard layouts (including German, Danish, and Icelandic) use AltGr to reach the third level shift. We need this key to type e.g. at (@), brackets ([, ], {, }), backslash (\), and tilde (~).

The ANSI (US) standard keyboard is also missing a key that is most often used to type the less then, greater then, and pipe (<, >, |) in most layouts (right of the smaller left shift key).

To make things worse Macs overload Alt and AltGr into a single Option key. This makes Mac keyboard really hard to use for programming (and makes many people accidentally close the window when trying to type @).

Most international programmers that I know have simply given up on their native keyboard layouts because of these problems.

Unfortunately, US keyboards are quickly getting rid of the right hand super key, as well as the context menu (right-click) key, for whatever reason. And don't even get me started on the bastardized function keys lately. That's why they can pry my MS Surface ergo keyboard from my cold, dead hands.

Yeah, my current one doesn't have the context-menu key. Of all the things that could have been put in its place, I have PrtSc (Print Screen) instead.

I suppose at least there's still a key, could remap it to something else.

A collar bone aftermath are really annoying, it's no longer pushing back your shoulder, your shoulder is also a few centimeters shorter.

I often wear something (either the original brace I still have since 8 years or a tee-shirt in my back where you put your arms but not the head) to maintain my (right) shoulder

It's situations like this where I wish there were an OS out there that strictly had Vim-style modal interfaces. All the hand eye coordination and multi-key finger gymnastics required for present UIs just seem extraneous.

Obligatory: https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...

My brother suffered a broken collar bone at birth; I've never asked him how it affects him, but he was the athlete of the family.

I think when I broke my collarbone I would just peck at keys and use my mouse more (which I could access with my right, “good” hand).

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