For the majority of people, navigating on a desktop or laptop seems like it would be easy to do. All you need to do, we hear you say, is use the mouse or the touchpad to direct the cursor to where you want it on the page! What’s so hard about that?
Well, while that might sound incredibly straightforward for a number of different reasons, for some people it’s not quite so easy. Indeed, for people who are living with a motor disability which affects their movement and fine motor skills, using a mouse or a touchpad for a laptop can actually present quite a serious challenge. The same can also be said for people who are trying to navigate with limited sight. For these individuals, an alternative option is available: keyboard integration, so that they can navigate using their keyboard instead of having to worry about using a mouse or touchpad.
Sight loss and motor disabilities are the two primary reasons as to why people find themselves needing keyboard integration in order to fully make use of their laptop or computer device. This is a problem which is far larger than it might seem initially, though; as many as 300 million people could be living with sight loss at any one time in our modern society. Meanwhile, in addition to this, a further group of individuals find themselves living with motor difficulties, such as Cerebral Palsy which is predicted to impact as many as 1 in 250 children! Clearly, then, the scale of the problem is large and so, a solution is absolutely necessary if these people are to have a chance at having a happy and healthy lifestyle and to share in the same activities as their friends and peers.
There are a number of ways in which keyboard integration can prove to be useful in terms of allowing disabled individuals to act independently while using the internet or their devices. But how can keyboard integration help with this?
Keyboard integration allows users to make use of the arrow keys on their keyboard for navigational purposes. This is as an alternative to using the mouse and / or the cursor to scroll through web pages. In doing so, this allows the individual to have careful control over their navigation of the website; instead of having to hope that they are able to control the cursor, which can seem almost impossible with an unsteady hand, the individual has a chance to navigate through the website easily and seamlessly.
If you think that your website or app visitors and users could benefit from having keyboard navigational control then integrating this software could be of direct benefit for you to consider! We here at Purple Lens provide high quality keyboard control software which is designed specially to help your users take control over their device use, so that you can be confident you are doing all you can to make your own product inclusive for all viewers or users!
