Android keyboard ditches keys entirely, predicts what you mean

TapType is a new Android keyboard that's invisible. You can't see it – but that's OK, neither can its developer nor some of its target users. Developer Aaron Hewitt released TapType 2.0 earlier this week. It's a keyboard for Android devices that tracks the relative positions of where your fingertips tap the screen and …

[KittenHuffer]

Well ....

.... I never saw this coming!

-------> Trying it with one eye only! Still looks the same!

[Gavsky]

Re: Well ....

Ah, you need to rapidly open & close alternate eyes - something around 90Hz is best*

*I am in no way responsible for anyone's eyes melting.

[FeRDNYC]

Re: Well ....

You can't tell people to put their eyes in a blender and then just pretend you had nothing to do with them getting frappéd. :swirly eyes emoji that El Reg won't let me use:

[Andy Non]

Invisible keyboard?

This sounds like an article for tomorrow (April 1st)

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

During lockdown, I took my work PC home. When I removed the keyboard from its normal place under my monitor stand, I noticed that most of the keys were blank. It was an old keyboard, and I touch type. So I hadn't noticed - but if anyone else had to use my pooter, they might have struggled, with my mostly blank keyboard.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"they might have struggled, with my mostly blank keyboard."

Hardly. In a world of mostly blank people who have little to say and those gems they deign to cast upon the world are sufficiently vacuous that their digital double has a free rein to fill in the gaps. Essentially a manglement keyboard.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

> my mostly blank keyboard.

This comment is being typed on one of this model of keyboard:

https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-ultimate/

However, I admit, shame-facedly, that my particular 2nd hand unit is one of the ones with printed keycaps.

Other such devices are available:

https://www.hhkeyboard.com/uk/products/hhkb-studio-snow#Customise

I like the blank look, but I do find legends helpful.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

Liam,

Nice! I'm amused by the idea. I could have got one of those. I have since replaced my mostly blank keyboard with a nice new one, with all letters present and correct. Which I can't read - because it's partially hidden under a shelf, and I can't see that far anyway.

However, if forced to press the print screen button, I'd have to look - because I can never remember which one it is. I use it about once a year, and my touch typing course was done on an actual typewriter - that didn't have one of those. So there's a use for labels, and I bet you pay more for not having them.

Back in the 80s, my brother bought a fashionable black watch - it had a black face and silver hands. No markings, no indexes, no writing of any kind. He then stopped wearing it, because it was too hard to tell the time. I committed my own various 80s fashion-crimes, but at least I didn't commit a stupid-crime. I still argue that my love for fluorescent socks was fine - just none of the other clothes I chose to wear with them.

[Dan 55]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

"It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me," said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, "Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?"

[Liam Proven]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

"Now I really do think I'm going to be ill."

"Go ahead. We could do with a little colour about the place."

[FeRDNYC]

Re: Invisible keyboard?

My entire computer didn't cost $200. (Admittedly, it's a piece of crap, but I think if I connected a $200 keyboard to it, it would quite justifiably refuse to even boot. ...Also, its only USB-3 ports are aftermarket on a PCIe card, so the primary keyboard can't be attached to one of those ports or it won't be recognized during the boot process.)

[Gavsky]

This explains an awful lot: "All your base are belong to us"...

[I ain't Spartacus]

Tim Cook deserves credit

15 years ago, an employee at Apple in da frozen Norf of England had a son who is blind. The kid was about 8 at the time, and had a group of blind friends around the country, who all had iPod touches - because they could play their music on a talking interface. Not a good one, but there was one - unlike other mp3 players. One of that group of friends was taught by Mum, and I spent some time with him, seeing if the iPad made a good UI. It was terrible, but the alternative was his BrailleNote (a laptop without screen, but a 7-key Braille keyboard and a 2 line 40 character Braille display (using metal pins). He also had a normal laptop, using Windows.

As an example, the iPad screen reader would tell you what letter you'd hit on the onscreen keyboard. It would say "capital T". Not because you'd entered a capital T, but because the iPad keyboard used to be in all-caps so you got a lower case T, unless the shift key was glowing blue - in which case you got a capital one. But the screen reader didn't know that, it just knew you'd hit a key with a capital T written on it. Confusing.

Anyway Apple turned these kids into a user test group. I'm sure they had others. By the time the kids were twelve, they'd all had multiple online meetings with Tim Cook, and been paid so many iTunes credits that they owned all the games and One Direction singles that any child could possibly want. Giving £500 of One Direction songs - does that count as some kind of child abuse..? Apple couldn't pay them, due to child labour laws. So in the end they all got free iPhones or iPads.

Clearly Tim Cook took a personal interest in getting this done, and it's to his credit.

The RNIB have recommended Apple for years, and all the blind people I know have iPhones and Apple Watches.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Tim Cook deserves credit

> Tim Cook deserves credit

The efforts predate Tim Apple.

I wrote -- and linked to -- Steve Wonder's tribute to Steve Jobs 3 years ago:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/apple_lenovo_blind_fail/

> all the blind people I know have iPhones and Apple Watches.

Yup. I said as much in this article.

Apple's own software, including OSes and apps, are among the most accessible there are. The problems can start when you try to, for instance, run Microsoft Office on a Mac using Voiceover. Suffice to say that one of the people quoted in the above link tells me that for work he runs MS Office on its native Windows.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Tim Cook deserves credit

Liam,

The efforts do predate Cook. But he continued them, and put personal time and energy into doing so. And things improved under his watch, at least in terms of iOS. I've barely used MacOS - and so know nothing about it.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"extrapolates which keys in the QWERTY layout you were aiming for."

I can see that being extremely popular outside the insanity of anglosphere. (Not!)

Couple a francophone with autoconfuse anglaise with lashings of AI you might get a whole new school of post modern philosophy or complete crap. (Deciding which is left as an exercise for the intelligent reader.)

If the user has multiple keyboards configured for various layouts (as Gboard can be configured) accidentally switching to another configuration would produce equally confused output or at a minimum, irritation. Easily done on Gboard EN•FR to FR•EN.

Still anything that makes technology more accessible or just honestly attempts to, has to be applauded.

[xc8]

at least no worries about UI theming there...

[Voice of Salinity]

Swype

When Android went 64-bit the 32-bit Swype APK no longer installs. One failed attempt at reverse-engineering the APK later and I'm stuck with the next best, SwiftKey.

SwiftKey's swipe word accuracy is terrible in comparison. I wondered whether this is to force me to turn on their sodding AI, which I refuse to do.

I mourn Swype, and I curse Microsoft, every time I use my phone.

[molletts]

Re: Swype

I'm glad I'm not the only person who longs for a true Swype replacement. For me, it Just Worked(tm), whereas I frequently find myself cursing SwiftKey out loud for repeatedly inserting the wrong word - often something really obscure that I've never actually typed instead of a really common word.

Is it really the next-best after Swype, though? Surely someone out there has made less of a hash of implementing gesture typing? (There are other things it does badly too, which, IIRC, Swype did well, such as the way the layout changes when switching to alternate pages, thus nerfing muscle-memory.)

(Given that Microsoft technically own Swype, you'd have thought they would be able to fix that aspect of SwiftKey using its technology. But I guess they have different priorities - probably encouraging us to drink the AI Kool-Aid.)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Swype

> When Android went 64-bit the 32-bit Swype APK no longer installs.

In case it helps:

https://github.com/DroidFreak32/swype

More info:

https://xdaforums.com/t/any-way-to-run-swype-dragon-keyboard-on-android-14-on-pixel-6-pro.4640113/

I found a hack that worked. Snag is, it's US English and I can't add more languages... so I don't use it. My Android devices feel crippled now.

[Doctor Syntax]

I see Knoppix appears to have been abandoned. That supported blind use as Klause Knopper's wife Adriane is blind. That's a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the future

Looking back at my strategy summary for 2011, I have a line "Increasing push for accessibility as older (richer) customers still want to use their iShinys".

That was BELOW the line saying "Alien Invasion: All UK offices shut simultaneously". And that was the line that got removed from the executive summary as - quote - the chances of all offices closing at the same time isn't worth worrying about for business continuity - unquote.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's long ago..

.. but my first encounter with blind people coding was when I was in the UK visiting a PSION Organiser II user group.

That's a long time ago, but I have never since lost sight (sorry) of the fact that facilitating accessibility isn't an add-on, it is a right.

[druck]

The prime example certainly seems to be on the minds of Wright and Badani: Microsoft.

You only have to look at the example Microsoft is setting now, emitting vast quantities of borken AI slop, to know that isn't way to go.

[Liam Proven]

Wrong story error, @Druck?

[druck]

Yes, thought I'd withdrawn it too, but just discovered this tab again, and I obviously hadn't pressed the button. Sorry for the confusion.

I'd left this tab open because I wanted to add something about my experience porting a Windows screen reader to Windows CE back in the early days of the iPAQ, exactly what I don't remember!