Abstract
The capability to efficiently input texts with hardware or soft keyboards is a major achievement to improve the digital inclusion of motor-impaired users in the modern ICT world. One way to obtain this capability is the use of multi-character keyboards that make it possible to significantly reduce the number of selected keystrokes. To this aim, in this paper we propose the orthogonal pseudo-syllabic layout for an English keyboard with high keystroke savings. Since English is characterised by a large number of frequent monosyllabic words, the careful design of the consonant and vowel graphemes that compose the pseudo-syllables makes it possible to directly select the most frequent multi-character units of the language. Therefore, the frequency statistics of English have been carefully analysed to select a suitable set of pseudo-syllables and to choose their placement on the orthogonal layout. The keyboard layout has then been tested with the automatic acquisition of a set of English texts. The obtained keystroke savings are comparable with those obtained with other languages which, in contrast with English, are characterised by very regular orthographies.
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Curatelli, F., Martinengo, C. (2010). Enhancing Digital Inclusion with an English Pseudo-syllabic Keyboard. In: Leitner, G., Hitz, M., Holzinger, A. (eds) HCI in Work and Learning, Life and Leisure. USAB 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6389. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16607-5_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16607-5_14
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