An Alternative Chinese Keyboard Layout Design for Single-Digit Typists

At the 10th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP) held on July 12-14, 2006 at University of Linz, Austria, a paper was presented on the design of an alternative Chinese keyboard by the staff of the National Taiwan Normal University.

The paper focused on the feasibility of an innovative assistive technology solution - the alternative Chinese keyboard layout - and its efficacy and usefulness to single-digit typists. The new eight-rows by five-columns keyboard layout is based on the principles of alternative keyboard design. An experiment comparing the speed and accuracy on different keyboard patterns was conducted and no significant difference was found among these patterns.

The efficiency of the text entry depends on the suitability of the control interface, including proper selection methods and keyboard layouts. A suitable keyboard layout is a prerequisite for single-digit typists to enter text efficiently. Other keyboards, like the LIAISON and Chubon, are the most conventionally used keyboards for the physically impaired. However, the single-digit Chinese keyboard has never been explored as an option.

The alternative Chinese keyboard encompasses traits like centralizing the most commonly used symbols, adjoining the most frequented consonants and vowels in close proximity and placing consonants used as prefixes on the left and the vowels used as suffixes on the right of the keyboard. It has eight-column by five-row layout with 17 phonograms in the center. These contribute 58.77% of the phonograms used for spelling the 1,579,771 Chinese characters. A convenience sample of two men and six women was taken. They worked on the keyboard using the index finger of their dominant hand to simulate the typing performance of single-digit typists.

The researchers took inputs from Unlimiter 1, an alternative computer access device, to design different keyboard layouts. The layout has a unique keyboard pattern, while maintaining the biomechanical relationship of the keys of QWERTY layout. The phonograms from the random-alternative layout were selected and assigned to the alternative keyboard layout.

A trial run was conducted with eight subjects divided into four groups; each group was assigned a different keyboard pattern from QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY and Random-Alternative. They were asked to generate 12 typing records for each keyboard pattern, out of which 10 were randomly chosen, and their typing speed and accuracy were recorded. The results suggested that the typing speed of the subjects was the fastest while using the QWERTY layout, followed by the Alternative layout, the Revised-QWERTY layout and eventually the Random-Alternative layout. In terms of the keystroke accuracy, there wasn’t any glaring difference between any of the patterns.

To conclude, we can say that the Alternative keyboard layout is the most suited for single-digit typist. As seen in the trial run, a remarkable typing speed and accuracy was achieved and has scope to improve, as the subjects were not familiar with the keyboard layout. The study creates a platform to compare different keyboard layout patterns and also provides a comparative study of the physical and the on-screen keyboard. In addition, all of this information can prove to be very useful in developing other alternative inputs devices that will enable accessibility options for people with disabilities.