How I learned to use my PC with a broken wrist

Topic

New Reply

ISSUE 21.32 • 2024-08-05 WINDOWS By Lance Whitney After fracturing my wrist in a recent fall, I had to figure out how to use the accessibility feature
[See the full post at: How I learned to use my PC with a broken wrist]

7 users thanked author for this post.

Alex5723, ibe98765, Lars220, Norio, fisher75, DLivesInTexas, lmacri

Reply | Quote

Replies

One thing you didn’t mention is single-handed keyboard layouts. I assume they are still available to select in the accessibility or keyboard setup areas, as they were in earlier versions of Windows, or can be downloaded from elsewhere.

Reply | Quote

Hope your wrist gets better and you are more comfortable.  Don’t give up  – we need you.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lance Whitney

Reply | Quote

Your article hits home. I had right hand surgery a few years ago and had similar issues. I’m able to use a mouse with either hand and was able to type a little bit with my right. I tried dictation and it was a disaster.

More recently I had further surgery on my right hand that left me a little less able for awhile. Unfortunately I now have essential tremors so using a mouse is a bit like whack-a-mole.

(not looking for sympathy here) And a further complication is Dupuytren’s contracture in my right hand so that even tho I’ve recovered from the surgery I have problems still. Dupuytren’s has affected my finger reach making anything that uses my right little finger very difficult. I’ve compensated by re-assigning keys but what I’d really like is a smalller keyboard meaning less space between keys overall and maybe slightly smaller keys. Those don’t seem to be available.

I’m glad you recovered!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lance Whitney

Reply | Quote

And a further complication is Dupuytren’s contracture in my right hand so that even tho I’ve recovered from the surgery I have problems still. Dupuytren’s has affected my finger reach making anything that uses my right little finger very difficult.

I have a very mild case of Duputren’s.  There is one tendon near the thumb of my left hand that is a bit tight and a couple of thickened nodules on the palms of both hands.  I have found that occasional self-massage on the tendon helps relax it.  You might give this a try.

Reply | Quote

nteresting article. I’ve macular generation so I have vision issues but I’ve been using dictation since at least 2000, starting with dragon, Dragon was bought by Microsoft a few years ago. Once I found the dictation on Windows 10 I switched over to that and it worked quite well. In early days of Windows 11 things seemed to be going well but since Microsoft is messing around with the voice dictation now with two systems on Windows 11, maybe even three systems?…. I’ve been very unhappy and I find it very messy and unclear. My experience does not jive with your experience.

I find “voice access” in Windows 11 unusable, mostly it crashes a lot and when it does work it seems to make a lot of errors.

My best results occur when I use Winky+H, this seems to be “voice typing” but again I’m totally confused with all the naming conventions.

When I press win key+CTL+S it’s called “Windows speak recognition” and this is works for me some of the time.

What would be nice is a table, name of the application, smart keys linking it, lifespan predicted by Microsoft.

In conclusion, all I see is Microsoft diddling around with their speech / accessibility features with no strategic plan and probably very little end user input. It’s amazing since they own dragon which had a pretty reasonable application that worked better than any native Microsoft so far. The big advantage of Dragon was that you could build your own vocabulary of specialist terms, which you don’t seem to be able to do in any native Microsoft system but the downside of dragon once Microsoft came along was that it was a large program that was running in parallel on your system.

Just a note, I find the automatic punctuation on all of the Microsoft systems provides more errors so it’s not a net benefit and far simpler to turn it off and speak the punctuation.

Thanks for the note on sticky keys, never knew about them and I can say well that could be quite useful

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lance Whitney

Reply | Quote

Lance, I am glad you are on the recovery road. I found this article so helpful from your personal experience.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lance Whitney

Reply | Quote

It takes a much stronger man than I to tolerate windows voice access. As you pointed out, the dictation has gotten much better in Windows 11 than it was in Windows 10.. but it still leaves a lot to be desired.. And now I see why or punctuation. is turned off by default. any hesitation inserts. another..

but I appreciate your article and the opportunity to sample it again.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lance Whitney

Reply | Quote

“Despite my writing about the Windows accessibility features in a host of articles over the years, it wasn’t until this accident that I actually had to use them every day.”

In the technology sales world we had a statement about “eating your own dog food”, which meant that if you were selling something to someone, you should also be using it.

Similarly, when you go to a doctor and attempt to describe the pain you experience from say sciatica pain or the numbness in your feet from peripheral neurotrophy, the doctor really isn’t capable of understanding your actual pain because generally, they haven’t experienced it themselves.

First hand experience is always best for understanding something.

Reply | Quote

Michael Marchand wrote:

I’ve macular generation so I have vision issues

Something you might want to monitor:

Eyestem to begin human trials for its pioneering Dry AMD treatment
Apr 02, 2024, 02:22:00 PM IST

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/eyestem-to-begin-human-trials-for-its-pioneering-dry-amd-treatment/articleshow/108969367.cms

1 user thanked author for this post.

Michael Marchand

Reply | Quote

I would like to point for those using Apple devices : Apple Voice Control on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

..Voice Control offers an enhanced command and dictation experience. Users can traverse and control the entire screen with just their voices, giving them full access to every major function of the operating system. Additionally, users can gesture with their voices to click, swipe, and tap anywhere—so they can 
 do everything someone could do with a mouse or with touch. Voice Control availability on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS ensures a consistent experience for users on all of their Apple devices…

* About a year ago I have broken my right arm and used some of my iPhone’s accessibility features to help using the iPhone.

Reply | Quote

Lance

We have a limited need for a keyboard on our Windows computers when we use Nuance’s Dragon Professional voice recognition software to dictate text into Word, Excel, Outlook, FireFox, and DuckDuckGo.

And for people with disabilities, they can use Dragon voice recognition to, “open applications, navigate menus and utilize mouse-grid on multiple monitors to segment the screen and position the cursor by voice.”

In addition to simple dictation, Dragon:

• Allows us to create and use custom voice commands to insert standard boilerplate text into documents;
• Allows us to create and use macros to automate multi-step tasks;
• Has the ability to learn how you use language (speech patterns and words) through speech recognition from existing documents; and
• Learns as you dictate – in that if it misspells a word as you dictate it learns the “new word” as you correct the misspelling.

https://www.nuance.com/dragon/business-solutions/dragon-professional.html

 

Reply | Quote