
Ask HN: Why don't keyboards have braille? - a3n
In reading How Technology Is Besting My Blindness, a person&#x27;s account of how technology helps him mitigate and overcome the challenges of his disappearing eyesite, I began to wonder why keyboards don&#x27;t commonly include brail on the keys.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2017-01-19&#x2F;how-technology-is-besting-my-blindness<p>I&#x27;m a competent, sighted touch-typist, but even so I still have to occasionally look at the keyboard to find a little-used key, or one that&#x27;s been moved or oddly sized relative to other keyboards.<p>The reason this works for me is that ... the name of the key is printed on the key. It&#x27;s great to be sighted.<p>I imagine, with no experience or evidence, that there may be apps that help sight-challenged people learn what each key is. And I don&#x27;t know whether braille is anywhere close to universally learned.<p>So the question is posed: Why don&#x27;t keyboards include braille, and why is there no movement to make it so?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;?q=braille+keyboards&amp;ia=products
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rpeden
They do exist[1], and you can get braille stickers to add to normal qwerty
keyboards[2].

The reason there's not a wider movement to make braille QWERTY keyboards
easily available is that most people just don't want them.

[1] [http://www.electronickeyboards.com/braille-
keyboards.html](http://www.electronickeyboards.com/braille-keyboards.html) [2]
[https://www.amazon.com/Braille-Keyboard-Stickers-Visually-
Im...](https://www.amazon.com/Braille-Keyboard-Stickers-Visually-
Impaired/dp/B001BPYJQO)

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nitwit005
Quite a few keyboards have some sort of tactile way of telling if your hands
are on the "home row". The Macbook pro I'm using has small lines under the F
and J keys. That's all you need to position if you can touch type.

I suppose that's not perfect if you can't find the key, but echoing what you
type is enough for most cases.

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azeirah
I've always been interested in having some kind of tangible feedback on each
key. Braille might be a decent solution for at the very least a-z keys.

I'm not sure what you want to do for the rest of the keys, shift for example,
you want to annotate the shift key with "⠩⠊⠋⠞"? And other keys like alt, ctrl,
insert etc?

~~~
a3n
I wouldn't know what to put on the other keys. Whatever is most useful to
sight-challenged people. Maybe the traditional typewriter keys don't need
anything, just the keys around the edges.

EDIT: OT, I was mildly surprised that Google Translate doesn't translate
braille.

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dahdum
Typing with braille on every key would be uncomfortable imho. I have used
blank key caps for many years now though, and I believe it's not a large
problem for majority of blind users.

~~~
anotheryou
I can totally not type blindly when not sitting perfectly. E.g. reaching over
to the side to type in something when using a beamer. How does this work for
you?

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NTripleOne
I'm not him but I genuinely can't remember the last time I needed to actually
look at my keyboard, regardless of where or how I'm positioned.

Although I don't find my fingers on the keyboard from the homerow nubs, I use
the caps lock and return keys as my finger landmarks.

It's probably (read: definitely) because I'm a heavy PC gamer, but looking now
I've just noticed that my 'fingers resting on keyboard' pose is... odd, to the
say the least.

Fingers from left to right, left hand: shift, A, W, D, space (which is sorta
to be expected) Right hand: right alt, J, O, [, return

~~~
anotheryou
I moved my awd one to the right. If I really like a game I go through the pain
of adjustig all controls one key to the left :) I'm more of a casual gamer
though. Only things with short rounds and online multiplayer for me.

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drakonka
This is very interesting! I think I might get some braille stickers for my
keyboard - it seems like it would not only provide me with some physical
feedback I can distinguish keys by instead of glancing down once in a while,
but also result in my actually learning braille.

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anotheryou
Get a cheap keyboard and experiment with superglue (make dots with with a
toothpick or something) (might be best to ask somone sighted to do it maybe).

I have some shuffled keys and indicated the keys for my index fingers with it.

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woirgtee
no idea - but I too would love to have braille on my keyboard and display

~~~
a3n
I wonder if this would encourage sighted people to learn braille?

~~~
OJFord
I don't think it would 'encourage' (as in motivate) me - but I expect that I
_would_ * learn braille.

After a while of using one, I expect that if I touched (or is it 'read'?!)
some braille, I'd just think:

> _Oh - feels like an 'a'._

* So if you meant 'encourage' as in 'support', yes, sorry, I agree. :)

