Guest post by David Niemeijer of AssistiveWare.

Some people burst with talent and will manage to create amazing stuff irrespective of the physical setbacks one suffers if affected by ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease or Motor Neurone Disease). Tucker is certainly one of those people. Being confined to a wheelchair and having to control his computer with his head this sound designer, video editor and multimedia magician is as creative as ever.

Often people ask him how he manages to still use all the advanced sound and video software that he needs to use to carry out his work. Pulling all the registers of his creative mind he has created a mind boggling "How We Do It" video that explains how he uses his computer using a HeadMouse Extreme, KeyStrokes, Infovox iVox and Proloquo and lots of art, video and sound tools. Check it out!

Website: How We Do It

- David Niemeijer
[Ed: Tucker has a bunch of websites including The Permanent Record of NewJack Rasputin website and The Permanent Record of NewJack Rasputin blog. If you search, there's others too! - Ricky Buchanan]

[amazondisclaim]

Today AssistiveWare released KeyStrokes 4.1, an update to their on-screen keyboard application for those with physical impairments and graphic tablet and touch screen users:

Version 4.1 is now Universal Binary, offers enhanced compatibility with Spaces, and on Leopard provides automatic layout switching when the user changes the keyboard layout in the Mac OS X Input menu. Also included is a newly released LayoutKitchen 2.1.1 layout editor, which allows users to design their own on-screen keyboards.

The full press release can be found here.

It is great to see KeyStrokes is now a Universal Binary and has improved support for Spaces, Leopard's built-in virtual desktop manager. I am slightly embarrassed to say that I have never messed around with Spaces. Though with this new compatibility, I guess I am going to have give it a try now.

- Joe Barnick, AssistiveGaming.com

Many of Mac OS X's standard keyboard shortcuts, such as "New Folder" (Shift + Command + N), "Save As" (Shift + Command + S), and "Paste and Match Style" (Option + Shift + Command + V), require pressing multiple keys simultaneously. While this isn't very difficult to do with KeyStrokes or SwitchXS, it would be much easier if you could save yourself two or three clicks by triggering complex commands like these with one button. Fortunately, LayoutKitchen makes this possible -and it couldn't be easier!

This article will show you how to create a Text Macro button in LayoutKitchen that simultaneously activates multiple keys. For demonstration purposes, we'll be adding a button to a KeyStrokes panel that takes a picture of the screen; however, if you want to add the button to a SwitchXS panel or change its function to something else, such as "Save As," the same basic steps should apply.

For this tutorial we'll be adding our button to an existing KeyStrokes panel. In LayoutKitchen, choose KS Panels and select an existing panel to open it.

In the Inspector, click the item kind pop-up menu and select Text Macro.

Click "New Button" to add a new Text Macro button to your panel. Position and size the button as you like.

Now we will set style and color options for the button. With the button still selected, in the Appearance section of the Inspector click the pop-up menu beside the word "Design" to set the design of the key. For this example we chose the Snow Key design.

Click the pop-up menu beside the word "Display" and select Label Only so only the button's label is displayed.

Click the color swatch directly below the word "Label" to bring up the Mac OS X Colors panel and set the label color. If it is not visible, click the small color wheel icon to bring up the color wheel. Make sure the small dot is centered in the middle of the color wheel and then drag the brightness slider towards the center so a shade of grey is selected. Click OK.

Click the color swatch directly below the word "Button" to bring up the Mac OS X Colors panel and set the button color. Click the red part of the color wheel near the edge and then drag the brightness slider all the way to the top so a bright shade of red is selected. Click OK.

Now we will enter the button's content including its Text Macro. In the Content section of the Inspector, click in the Description field and type "This button takes a picture of the screen".

Click in the Label field and title the button "Take a Picture".

Click in the Cue text field and type Take a Picture. If "Speak the key or suggestion below the cursor" is selected in the Audio & Visual Feedback section of the KeyStrokes preferences, KeyStrokes will speak this text when the cursor is over the button.

Now for the fun part: assigning the button's Text Macro. Click in the Text Macro field and then click the key list pop-up menu situated directly above it. From there, select Command from the list and then press "Add Key". A bracketed command down and command up instruction is added to the Text Macro field.

Click in between the command down and command up instruction. From the key list pop-up menu, select Shift from the list and then press "Add Key". A bracketed shift down and shift up instruction is inserted between the command down and command up instruction.

To complete the Text Macro, click in between the shift down and shift up instruction and type "3".

Right below the Text Macro field, make sure the option for "Allow auto repeat" is unchecked.

Choose File > Save to save your panel. Please note that if you are editing a read-only panel, such as those that come preinstalled with KeyStrokes, you will have to choose File > Save As to save your panel and give it a new name.

From the KeyStrokes Keyboard menu, select the panel that contains the new Text Macro button.

To test it, click "Take a Picture". If you hear a camera sound and see a new file titled "Picture 1" appear on your desktop, voila, you have correctly made a Text Macro button that simultaneously activates multiple keys!

- Joe Barnick

Now that KeyStrokes and Layout Kitchen work together, I have adapted a stardard KeyStrokes keyboard to work more the way I want it to. I've made it easier for me to use and more efficient for typing at the same time. Here's what I did so you can use mine or follow along with your own adaptions.

This is the keyboard I was using previously, the "Block" keyboard:

Prior to KeyStrokes 4.0 the keyboard was all grey, so the blue colour on some keys has already improved its usability for me. I wanted more colour though, so I loaded up Layout Kitchen and first opened the Block keyboards and used File->Save As to make a copy. I called my copy "R - Colour Block".

Then I started colouring the keys! It's easy to do, just click on the key in Layout Kitchen and then in the Inspection Panel click on the block of colour labeled "Button" and select the colour you want:

Next, I changed some of the keys to make them more efficient. Which keys you change will depend on your own usage and you'll have to figure out out for yourself. These were the changes I made:

• Changed the "q" key to a "qu" string because the "u" comes after 99% of the time and I can backspace it away on the occasions it's not needed.
• Removed the § key because I never use it.
• Removed the enter key because I only use return, not enter.
• Made the capslock key smaller because I hardly ever use it.
• Added a forward delete key.
• Made the column with capslock/shift/command/etc. in it narrower because I want the keyboard to be as small as possible and I don't need the extra width.

After all that, and the colouring, my keyboard looked like this:

I guess it could be a bit garishly bright for some, but it suits me. Even when my eyes are very bad I can usually hit the right keys because I have memorised the positions for most of them in relation to the borders between the coloured blocks.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed this keyboard block has a key with a "+" it it the bottom left corner. That one is set to bring up a different keyboard, the one called "R - Colour Block Plus" which is shown here:

The extra column on the left in purple has word endings on it. They're set up to type a backspace, then the letters shown on the key, then space. Say you're just selected "end" from the prediction list, KeyStrokes will helpfully type "end " into your document with it's auto-spacing. Then you hit the purple "-ing" key and keystrokes backspaces to erase the space, types "ing" and another space, neatly turning your "end " into "ending ". Kudos to Marie-France Bru for this idea which she used with SwitchXS. I chose the endings to include by looking up a list of the most common suffixes in English and using my own memory of how often I type different endings.

On the "Plus" keyboard the yellow "-" key in the bottom second-left column will turn the keyboard back to the regular. Because the keyboard takes up screen space even with the SmartTransparency turned on, I prefer it as small as possible unless I'm doing a lot of typing.

You can download my two keyboards from the link below. They need to be installed into the directory ~/Library/Application Support/Assistiveware Support/KeyStrokes keyboards/ before you can use them from KeyStrokes.

I'd love to hear feedback if anybody uses these!

- Ricky Buchanan

Amsterdam - 18 January 2008 - AssistiveWare today announced the release of new versions of its flagship products: KeyStrokes 4, SwitchXS 2.5 and LayoutKitchen2.

KeyStrokes 4, the latest version of AssistiveWare's award-winning on-screen keyboard with multilingual word prediction, adds LayoutKitchen, which allows users to design their own virtual keyboards. Such virtual keyboards can be used not only for typing, but also to launch applications, speak, run AppleScripts and much more. This makes KeyStrokes more than ever the hub that gives users who cannot use a physical keyboard or who prefer a graphic tablet or touch screen full access to their computer. KeyStrokes 4 also adds Spanish and Russian word prediction dictionaries. KeyStrokes 4.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.3 and later (including Leopard). The suggested retail price for KeyStrokes is €249 excluding VAT (US$299 in North America). Registered KeyStrokes 3 users can use the new version, but to use LayoutKitchen and design their own keyboards an upgrade to a KeyStrokes 4 activation code is required. An upgrade from KeyStrokes 3 to KeyStrokes 4 (including LayoutKitchen) costs €99 excluding VAT (US$129 in North America). This upgrade is free for anyone who purchased KeyStrokes 3 in 2007 or 2008. For more info they should contact support@assistiveware.com.

SwitchXS 2.5, which provides universal access to Mac OS X for users who cannot use a physical keyboard and mouse is now Universal Binary, adds full Leopard support, as well as many internal enhancements, and also includes the new LayoutKitchen 2. With SwitchXS 2.5, a user who cannot use a physical keyboard or mouse has full access to Mac OS X with just a single switch. SwitchXS 2.5 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and is a free update for all registered SwitchXS users. The suggested retail price for SwitchXS is €249 excluding VAT (US$299 in North America).

LayoutKitchen 2 makes designing on-screen keyboards for KeyStrokes and scan panels for SwitchXS much easier and faster with a new drag and drop button browser, SmartSnap and many other productivity enhancing features. The image browser is now searchable and includes over 600 images. LayoutKitchen 2.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.3 and later (including Leopard) and is a free update for all registered SwitchXS and LayoutKitchen users.

Website: AssistiveWare releases major new versions of flagship products

I have been beta testing the new version of KeyStrokes and it's a huge jump up from the previous version - highly recommended.

- Ricky Buchanan