Learning to use a keyboard and to type isn’t easy! It is a false assumption that children with handwriting difficulties will learn to type easily. It will certainly help these children in the long run, however, it is important to remember that children with motor and planning difficulties (e.g., bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, motor planning, visual perceptual and fine motor difficulties) in handwriting will also have these difficulties when initially learning to use a keyboard to type. Accommodations for these difficulties may need to be considered when teaching keyboarding and typing skills.
How do YOU type?
Hands up if you are a ‘2 finger’ typer. Do you use your two index fingers to stab at the keyboard? While there are a lot of proficient ‘2 fingers’ typers out there, I think it is important to teach kids proper finger positioning when learning how to use the keyboard!
If you have a keyboard in front of you, look down at it for a moment. What do you see?
- letters, numbers, symbols
- whole words
- a series of rows
- diagonal columns and straight columns of keys
- function keys
- a trackpad or a mouse nearby
- keys split into different sections
- lights
- white on black, black on white, something else?
Did you notice what I asked you to do? Looking up at a screen then looking down at the keyboard. Did you easily find your place back up on the screen to read my suggestions? For children with visual perceptual difficulties, this is one of the main issues they may have difficulty with as they look up and down and up again. They may also have to move their hands completely off the keyboard so they can see the keys. One of the main benefits of touch typing is eliminating the need to look up and down so often.
Various Aspects of Visual Perceptual Skills Required with Keyboarding and Typing
- Eye-Hand Coordination
It is the ability to coordinate eye movement with hand movements and includes the ability to process visual information to guide hand function. In keyboarding and typing, eye-hand coordination is needed to press the required keys. Beginner typists will need to look for each key to be typed, look up at the screen to make sure what is typed is accurate, look down again and so on.
As touch typing develops, the eye can rest on the screen and monitor what appears rather than how the hand moves. The fingers are less reliant on the ‘sight’ of letters on keys and can move more automatically.
Children may also need to watch their hand guide a mouse or trackball, with constant looking up at the screen and down at their hand as they work out the visual-spatial differences of moving something on a horizontal plane and how this can affect a cursor on the vertical plane.
- Visual Discrimination and Form Constancy
Visual Discrimination is the ability to classify objects or shapes based on visual information such as color, form, pattern, size or position. Form Constancy is the ability to identify an object, shape, letter, number, or symbol when it is presented in a different way (e.g., larger, smaller, rotated, italics, bold, different font, sideways, upside down, different color).
In keyboarding and typing, children need to be aware that letters are produced in capital and lowercase form. Most keyboards come with capital letter keys. Children need to grasp the concept of lowercase letters being produced on the screen when capital letters are pressed on the keyboard.
Some children will have difficulty reading certain fonts on the screen which they may be unfamiliar with. Some letters look quite different in different fonts (e.g., a, g, k). Some children may also have difficulty with words written in italics and they may have difficulty distinguishing letters because of their size on screen.
Recommendations and Accommodations for Visual Perceptual Difficulties
1.Use stickers on the keyboard. There are many stickers on the market to help children learn to type. Some of the features that stickers can help with include lowercase to cover capital letters, both lower and capital letters on the one sticker, and color coding so that the same finger strikes a certain color. You may also like to buy two sets of stickers so that you can place the ‘home key’ stickers on the child’s fingers.
2.Change the computer font to reflect a familiar handwriting font that the child is familiar with.
3.Teach proper finger positioning and touch typing. This will mean that over time, the child will not need to look at their hands when typing and they can concentrate their visual attention to the screen and what is being produced.
4.Change the mouse or cursor options on the screen. On a PC, this may be done through the control panel. You may want to experiment with options such as choosing a scheme with a large cursor (for easier visibility). Another recommendation is selecting the ‘Show location of pointer when I press CTRL key’. This is helpful for those children who have trouble locating their cursor/pointer on the screen within the confusing information that may be presented on the screen. Other options include downloading animated pointers. The cursor blink rate may also be changed so that it provides the appropriate visual prompt for the child so that it is not too fast to be noticed.
5.Provide a vertical easel document holder so that the child can see work to be copied in the same plane as it will be produced on screen. Some of these holders also include a highlighting line guide to help keep track of where the child is up to on the document to be copied.
- Position in Space or Visual Spatial Relationships
It involves the ability to process information about oneself in relation to their environment in space, orientation and position. It may involve the ability to understand directional language concepts such as up/down, next to, left/right, over/under, etc.
As mentioned previously, as typing and keyboarding skills develop there is less reliance on visual guidance to find the right keys on the keyboard. Over time touch typers can understand where their fingers are ‘in space’ and in relationship with other keys to be struck without looking. This is also true for the use of the mouse and trackball.
- Figure-Ground and Visual Memory
Figure-Ground is the ability to see an object or form when presented in a complex background. Visual Memory is the ability to remember and recall objects, shapes, symbols or movements in short-term memory. Visual memory requires visualization of what to remember.
In keyboarding and typing skills, both figure-ground and visual memory skills are required to learn the layout of the keyboard. They need to have a map (i.e. visualization) of the keyboard in one’s mind so that finding the keys becomes automatic. Difficulties with figure-ground and visual memory may lead to more reliance on the visual skills of looking and scanning (i.e. hunting) for the correct keys on the keyboard. This will slow down the typist and can often be observed with ‘2 finger typists’.
Both figure-ground and visual memory skills are also needed to enable a child to maintain their place on the screen when looking down and then up again to keep track of what they are writing on the screen. This is further complicated if the child is copying text to type onto the screen as they are looking at the stimulus, looking at the screen, looking back at the stimulus, looking at the screen, looking at their hands and so forth.
Locating the cursor/pointer may also be difficult for children who have difficulty with figure-ground skills. The pointer may look like a large capital ‘I’ when typing text and be confused with the print on the screen.