Typing when your hands are not steady
Stop a screen registering a wobble as three taps, and stop a keyboard turning one press into a row of the same letter.
A screen counts a tap the instant a finger lands, and counts a second landing as a second tap. A keyboard starts repeating a letter after about a third of a second. Both of those numbers were chosen by somebody, and both can be changed.
This matters for anybody whose hands are not perfectly still — after a stroke, with a tremor, with arthritis, with cold hands in an unheated hall, or at the end of a long day. It also matters for people using a phone on a bus.
Key points
- Make a screen wait a moment before it counts a touch
- Have a tap land where your finger started rather than where it drifted to
- Stop a keyboard turning one press into a row of the same letter
- Undo the whole lot with the single switch at the top of each page
What to remember
- Touch accommodations live under Accessibility, then Touch, and every switch on the page can be turned straight off again.
- Repeated letters are a timing setting, not a fault in you or in the keyboard.
- Filter keys is the fix for repeated letters. Sticky keys is the fix for holding two keys at once.
Try this
On a computer, open Settings, then Accessibility, then Keyboard, and type your own name into the test box with Filter keys off and then on. You are looking for the setting where your name comes out right the first time.
Practice: Typing when your hands are not steady. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.