Ted explains how using switch inputs, such as the Darcy USB keyboard, can take a lot longer than other input methods. He also tells us to properly label and markup interactive elements!
Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.
Thanks to Make It Fable for sponsoring the guest appearance for this episode.
Transcript
Nic
Hi I’m Nic Steenhout and you’re listening to the accessibility rules soundbite. A series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment and what barriers they encounter on the web
Nic
First I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provide accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training, and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. Also thanks to Make It Fable for their sponsorship of this episode.
Nic
Today I’m talking with Ted Galanos. Hi Ted how are you?
Ted
I’m well thanks and how are you Nic?
Nic
Doing very good. Super happy to be talking to you. So let me ask you this, the first question I have for you is what’s your disability or your impairment?
Ted
Actually i have two the one that i’ve had the longest was my blindness. First legally blind then totally blind at the age of 27. I’m 47 years old now due to retinitis pigmentosa. But also i have a physical impairment: peripheral sensory neuropathy which means the further away you get from the core of the body the less I can feel which means I can injure my fingertips or my toes, hands, or feet and not necessarily realizing. So I’m prone to bruising, burning skin tears and not necessarily realize that it’s happened and I’ve had to deal with chronically this all of my life and have had to sustain many many different cases of bacterial infection such as staph and strep. And so when you have to deal with this over and over again taking loads and loads of antibiotics whether it be oral such as a pill or intravenous and dealing also with the resistance factor of bacteria sometimes the bacteria will get into the bone and then the only option is left amputation. And so I have if you imagine your hands and you have three bones for each of the four fingers and two bones for the thumbs coming from the palm of your hand well the bone under the fingernail and the bone just behind that the medial are gone on all of my fingers and I don’t even have a ring finger on my left hand.
Ted
So my wife jokingly says well you’ll wear your ring around your neck.
Nic
Yeah
Ted
Which I indeed I do. I have a gold chain with a gold ring around my neck.
Nic
That’s fair enough. So what do you think your… What would you say your greatest barrier on the web is?What causes you the most problem?
Ted
Well the biggest barriers are if there’s a whole lot of clutter on a particular web page and I’ve heard other blind people talk about for the sighted world there’s a lot of eye candy and if the screen reader has to read through a bunch of garbage to get to the meat of the content of the page, the meaningful content of the page. it’s hard to wade through a lot of that. And if labels and links and other actionable items are not labeled properly or don’t function correctly then that is definitely a barrier. Now because of my fingers being amputated I cannot use a standard qwerty keyboard so I do use an alternative input device known as the Darcy USB. And what this device allows me to do is type using two switches one represents dot the other represents dash and in an expanded version of Morse code I can type through that code any character whether it be your alphabet, your numbers, your special characters and punctuation, your modifier keys, function keys. I can do anything with the Morse code as you might be able to do with the 104 type qwerty keyboard including certain JAWS/mouse cursor commands, putting it into a mouse mode or JAWS mode as it were.
Ted
So having said that I ran into a situation just the other day where I found a link on a particular webpage that I was testing. And I tried to hit my equivalent of enter on the link. It wouldn’t activate. I tried to hit the spacebar to activate it in the event that maybe the link was actually a button filled in. So I had to route JAWS to PC and click it with the JAWS cursor mouse.
Nic
Wow.
Ted
And that was kind of a headache to try to, you know, decide, do I do this? Well, this didn’t work, do I do that that didn’t work. So I did. And what clued me in the instructions was hover. And so hovering on things is not ideal for somebody that uses both the switch input and a screen reader.
Nic
Yeah,
Ted
Now somebody the the whole, the Darcy was invented for a woman who was sighted, but born without arms or legs. And that’s what they named it after her, Darcy. So but the Darcy can be put in a mouse mode, unrelated to the screen reader. So somebody sighted can track the mouse as it goes across the screen as if you were using the mouse with your hand.
Nic
Right.
Ted
And of course, when the mouse pointer gets to a certain place, obviously, it’s known as hovering. And so that’s just one example of an inconvenience or a barrier, as it were, as it relates to both technologies.
Nic
I’m super pleased, you’re talking about that. Because just yesterday, I was talking at a conference, at React Finland, and I was telling people, developers and designers don’t actually know how the end user is going to interact with their platform. And using the Darcy keyboard is functional, obviously, but it’s not going to be as fast to, to use as someone who can type 80 words or 100 words per minute on a on a regular, QWERTY keyboard. So I’m really happy, you’ve described that because I think it’s going to be super useful for a lot of people to realize, specifically, you know, there’s all these ways to do inputs that are different from what most developers and designers use out there. So thanks for that.
Ted
Right and, and just so your listeners have a, an even deeper understanding of what you mean by typing 80 to 100 words per minute with your eight fingers and two thumbs. And I am basically the Morse code input amounts to typing with one finger on one hand, and that includes typing the Ctrl key, for example, or all or whatever your modifier key is. And then the follow up key, same shift a for a capital A, you’re, you’re basically taking one finger, type shift, and then type A now one finger typist on a normal QWERTY keyboard, that he that is slower, but it’s faster than what I will describe next. Let’s say if anyone knows Morse code “dot” is the letter E, “dash” is the letter T, that is a king single key keystroke, right? Yep. But let’s say if you wanted to type the letter x dash dot, dot dash, or spacebar, dot dot dash dash, well, I can get pretty quick with this. But it’s still not anywhere close to typing the way somebody would on a standard keyboard. And furthermore, there can be up to six keystrokes per key. For example, your function keys is for like f1, dot dot dash dash dash dash, or the control key, dash dot dash dot dash, and then the follow up key dot dash dash, which would be a Ctrl W to say, out a window. So, and you have to pause a certain bit of time, based on what you have your type Matic rate set to. So, even the pauses, you know, take time, and time is relevant, but a route excuse me, time is relative, but you get the idea.
Nic
Yeah, and I would imagine there’s also a certain level of cognitive load because you have to concentrate even more on the combination that you have to type to be able to remember all the combination of dashes and dots and and what not, so you have to focus on that on top of focusing on trying to complete the task you’re doing on the web, right?
Ted
Yes, sir. That’s true. And so and I’m glad you mentioned that because I’ve been using Morse code in a couple of different ways since the summer of 1992. Actually, excuse me, the fall of 1992. When I, when I was, I was hospitalized due to some some physical problems with my hands and such. And so it delayed me going to college for a semester, I had just gotten done with Chris Cole. There, their college prep program. And I ended up getting a couple of infections, and it required surgery in Austin, Texas. And then it was recommended that I go to a rehabilitation hospital in downtown Houston, called at the time it was called Texas Institute for rehabilitation and research. Well, Texas Commission for the blind, had to couple up with Texas Institute for rehab and research to find out what was the best way for me to be able to type on a computer while being visually impaired, but also having these problems with my hands.
Nic
Hmm.
Ted
And so that was the whole idea. And because they knew that my vision was declining, and would eventually go completely away, I needed to use ZoomText. I needed to use vocalize. And by the way, this is all in DOS at the time, because there wasn’t really a thing just yet. And in 1992 93, and, and then a, a form of Morse code input, because I didn’t like wearing headphones, I still like wearing headphones. And so they tested me on dragon, which is a voice input. But the problem with that is that if I’m using voice input, and then using speech output, then you have a kind of feedback loop that causes a problem.
Nic
Yeah.
Ted
And so that’s why they used the, at that time, it was handy code. And then later, we found the Darcy, because we needed something that would be transparent to the computer, and be able to work under a Windows GUI interface rather than dos interface. And so that’s where we found the Darcy. A few years later, I was able to continue with my educational path in computer information systems. And I graduated with a Bachelor in Business Administration and in the fall of 2000. And so and then the Darcy USB is actually the third iteration of the Darcy device. I use the Darcy two as an Tw O. And then now the darsie USB, which I’ve used for 20 years. And, and they have not changed their technology in that 20 years. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it does take a bit of cognitive remembrance. And when you’re training, to and learning all of the keystrokes and memorizing and I don’t have all the keystrokes memorized, I got most of them memorized. But yeah, there are some things that I mean, who uses a scroll lock, and who uses the page break all that often, unless you’re using it in programming or something, and, and so there are certain keys that I just don’t know, I could look them up, but I don’t use them. But in training, you can actually attach a third switch, so that when you’re learning to type, and later, it’s just like touch typing on the keyboard, you just you just learn it and know it and do it out of habit rather than anything else. But say I’m learning Morse code. And let’s say I don’t remember what the keystroke x is. I can do dash dot, what are the other two, or three or two dot dash? Well, that pause would do a couple of things. If you didn’t have that third, call it a character return switch, it would then type dash dot would be n dot dash would be a so you have an a rather than the X that you originally wanted…
Nic
Of course.
Ted
We’re trying to think through what letter Am I really trying to type. So that once somebody has memorized most of the keystrokes, and they’ve basically adapted it into a touch type method, then then you can eliminate that third switch, which is of course what I’ve done years and years ago, decades ago.
Nic
Wow. Hey, Ted, if there was one message you’d like to pass on to web developers and web designers, what, what would it be?
Ted
Make sure each of your actionable elements be it a link button, combo box, etc, etc, make sure they are labeled properly and make sure that they are able to be activated both by mouse. And by switch. And by keyboard. And I’ll go even further and say, buy a switch such as a head mouse or eye gaze technology. I mean, there’s all kinds of switches out there. Now, I could be using a sip and puff tied to the Darcy. Or I could be using cheek switches or tongues switch this switch that plugs into the Darcy itself. I mean, there’s there. There’s all kinds of stuff out there. I just happen to use platform switches that are Velcroed to the table. They don’t slide move around when I’m typing with my hands or my chin. But just make sure each element is actionable and true. And that there’s not too much busy-ness for those that are blind and have to listen through a bunch of stuff to get to the heart of what the page is really wanting to communicate. Eye candy is nice for sighted folks, but even I think sighted folks, especially those that are using screen magnification for visually impaired. It’s tough to wade through a lot of the stuff that is non relevant.
Nic
Yeah.
Ted
Keep it simple, silly.
Nic
Keep it simple, silly. On that great note. Ted Galanos, thank you for being such a great guest and sharing your experiences with us.
Ted
Yes, Nic, and thank you so much for having me.