|
|
Despite a few inbuilt features for the visually impaired, retired Anna University professor V Krishnamoorthy observed that it takes more than five minutes for them to type a 22-word sentence on a touchscreen smartphone .[br][br][br]
[br][br]It takes more time, and often leads to frustration, to type the same sentence without error. This motivated the city-based professor to come up with a virtual keyboard smartphone application, K4 Keyboard, that functions on just four keys letting the user type messages faster and with less errors. The app with features for 14 Indian and foreign languages will be soon available on android and iOS operating system phones. All it requires from a user is to learn the 336 horizontal and vertical swipes and taps that represent numbers, alphabets, special characters, emojis, auto-complete word or sentence, even formatting texts and more- all fed in four square keys. There are also student-friendly features like calculator and unit conversion tools.[br][br]“With our app, a visually impaired person can type a text message in about 50% of the time they would usually take. The aim is to make a high school student write exams without the help of a scribe,” said Krishnamoorthy, who worked in mathematics and MCA departments at Anna University and is now part of Learnfun Systems, a company that develops linguistic apps. At present, touchscreen phones offer screen magnifier and screen readers for reading. For typing, the user has to touch and hold on every key till the desired key is pressed, which the system tells. “For someone who has not used a smartphone may find it easy to learn the various strokes and taps faster,” Krishnamoorthy said.[br][br]The app comes with several features that promises to make typing faster and minimising incorrect finger movements on the screen. “The user can type a text message with a combination of swipe, tap and even leave gaps in between texts for the app to auto-fill. Even long words can be typed with just the first and last few letters with a gap in between and the system will automatically finish the word,” the retired professor said.[br][br]Besides, the app comes with an extensive database of 200 frequently used words that can be entered by knowing their abbreviations and inbuilt proverbs, idioms and phrases that can be easily used with abbreviations. “The app is customisable. It can be used by people with other physical challenges by integrating with a motion tracking system and can be used in smartwatches by the rest of us,” he said. The app will be soon upgraded with a total of 100 languages.[br][br]Source : timesofindia.com |
|
发表于 2019-06-09 18:54:40
收藏
Like
Stick Card
Jack
