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Comment by Istof | Hacker News Reader

I have no clue why physical sliding keyboards basically disappeared from "smart phones"... they are not only good for the blinds (I guess they probably make pretty much the same amount of money whether they include it or not)

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Actually, as a blind person, typing on a touch screen isn't that hard, and frankly I don't even find myself typing that much with the advent of reasonable dictation. In a majority of cases for short texts I can dash off something as fast as a sighted person, and for longer-form material I will use Siri's dictation for a great speed advantage.

have you ever tried a phone featuring a sliding keyboard? is it not easier/faster then a touch screen?

But that usually comes at a loss for screen space. More screen space gives you more flexibility for more touch interactions (see rotor for voiceover, possible use of assistivetouch, etc.) and more information displayed when zoomed in (if applicable, which is _amazing_ to use for my visually impaired but not blind father). Then I have a mountain of other uses if you want to go into accessibility features for other disabilities, just on iOS.

And if we're talking about typing on a physical device, a fair number of visually impaired folks I know have bluetooth braille displays (e.g. note taking w/iPads in class), or you can sub a regular keyboard to that instead if wanted (if you don't want the display either).

From my sighted but alternative perspective on why physical keyboards built into phones is not the best idea either, I enjoy being able to type in English and Korean, then swap over to Chinese handwriting when needed. I don't have the same thumb typing muscle memory for other languages/layouts than I do for qwerty, so it's great to see what I'm typing occasionally.

I imagine Siri was a life changing. Did you try the swype keyboard? So far has been the best keyboard I have tried.

The real game-changer was VoiceOver, which Apple introduced with the iPhone 3GS in June 2009. Blind people were using their iPhones with VoiceOver for over two years before Apple integrated Siri. Siri is quite convenient though.

As for alternate keyboards, Fleksy has been popular among blind iOS users.

Flesky's website just goes over and over about how it's "the best in the world", but doesn't actually describe the product. Could you tell us a bit about what makes it different?

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