This entry originally appeared on my disability blog, I hate stairs.
I mui dislike the winter. My hands get cold and they shut down. This winter, I can barely type at all. Obviously, my inevitable descent has made blogging a chore. I’ve been sub-consciously prioritizing my computer-related tasks, and those that include typing have not been making the top of the list. In fact, about the only thing I’ve done lately is play games. Those are easy because I can press the same buttons over and over.
To combat the invasion of atrophy in my hands, I’m looking into some adaptive technology. The plan is to try a combination of speech recognition and on-screen keyboard software. Since I’m using a Mac, I can’t use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the popular PC speech recognition software. But I can use a spin-off for Mac called MacSpeech Dictate. It’s built using the Dragon engine. It does lack some of the features of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but the core functions are there.
I’m thinking of using an on-screen keyboard called KeyStrokes. It’s got some nice features, such as predictive text. In fact, I’m using it now. It’s a bit slow, but we’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, I’m going to bed.
Cheers.