-----Original Message-----
From: jfw-bounces@... [mailto:jfw-bounces@...]
On Behalf Of Farfar Going 60
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 10:11 AM
To: The Jaws for Windows support list.
Subject: Re: Learning Jaws and the Keyboard

Late? Not at all. It's still 2012. You have up to a year, month, and a day
to respond. OF course the originator may have moved on to other topics -- or
lists, or countries.

Dave Carlson
Tastefully composed and launched near the Pacific Ocean using a Dell
Latitude E6520, JAWS 13.0.718, and Windows 7 Professional 32-bit


----- Original Message -----
From: <ckrugman@...>
To: "The Jaws for Windows support list." <jfw@...>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 07:01
Subject: Re: Learning Jaws and the Keyboard


Hi Richard,
This is a late response. I first started to learn to type on an old manual
typewriter when I was about your daughter's age fifty years ago. At thattime
my classroom had a Braille book with a prototype of a keyboard showing
keys with Braille labels that was part of the Braille book. I memorized the
keyboard and my average typing speed on a typewriter is about 60-70 WPM. If
your daughter is going to be proficient she needs to learn proper fingering
and memorization. This is the same method that professional sighted
stenographers and typists have used for years. Of course, at that time while
use of Braille was encouraged for totally blind children it was also
expected that blind children learned how to adapt and used standard whenever
possible. hope this helps.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Holloway" <rholloway@...>
To: "The Jaws for Windows support list." <jfw@...>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 11:02 AM
Subject: Learning Jaws and the Keyboard

I am a typically sighted parent of a blind child (age 9). I interact with
many other parents of blind children and could use some advice for my child
and to share with other parents.

My daughter was effectively born blind having lost all usable vision by a
few months of age. She learned braille from the start and learned to type
on a perkins brailler first, then started to learn qwerty. She much
prefers to use a braille keyboard on her computer and notetaker (Apex) as
well, keeping a qwerety keyboard plugged in on her computer for occasional
use for certain keys and functions.

My question is this: What is the best way for a blind typist to learn to
use a qwerty keyboard; to do this most efficiently? Is it using JAWS
feedback with the repeating of characters verbally as typed? What about
the braille key caps, or at least braille stickers for keys? (I have never
yet found a USB braille key capped keyboard, only an old PS-2 style unit)
I get that touch typing and just pressing down on braille key caps would
be of little use braille-wise, but is is like for sighted typists, in that
it helps get reoriented when your fingers move or you get distracted,
etc., and just to learn qwerty in the beginning? It would be easy enough
to remove the braille and go with a standard keyboard later on--
conventional keyboards are cheap.

What we end up with as parents is an argument between (mostly
typically-sighted) parents that braille caps are a great idea vs. how bad
of an idea they are to use. I'm not trying to sit in either camp-- I'm
wondering which seems to help (and curious about any suggestions of the
best ways to learn qwerty typing without vision).

I don't want to clog up the list too much with this, though it is
JAWS-related, obviously. Please do feel free to reply directly if you
prefer. Your response may be valuable to quite a few parents of younger,
keyboard-learning braille computer users, so thanks for any experience you
may be able to share.

Richard
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