If you cannot use a physical keyboard, the built-in Windows on-screen keyboard is usually the first thing you find, and often the last one anybody tells you about. Between it and full AAC systems costing thousands, there is a whole category most people never discover.
This list collects what is actually out there for typing without a physical keyboard on a desktop computer: free tools, paid ones, and a few built for eye tracking or switch access. I have tried to note who each one is for, because "on-screen keyboard" covers products that solve very different problems.
Disclosure: I build one of the products in this space. Everything here is listed on merit, including the ones that compete with mine.
On-Screen Keyboard is a utility that displays a virtual keyboard on the screen and allows users with mobility impairments to type data using a pointing device or joystick.
Always there, no install needed. No word prediction, no dwell click, and it steals focus, so long typing sessions get tiring fast.
An onscreen keyboard useful for tablet PC users and for mobility impaired users.
The Linux equivalent. Layouts are customisable and it has basic prediction, but it is tied to GNOME.
Free Virtual Keyboard is a free, lightweight, multilingual and finger friendly virtual keyboard.
Minimal and genuinely free. Good if you need keys on screen and nothing else.
Florence is an extensible scalable virtual keyboard for GNOME. You need it if you can't use a real hardware keyboard, for example because you are disabled, your keyboard is broken or because you use a tablet PC, but you must be able to use a pointing device (as a mouse, a...
Linux, long-running project, works with switch access.
Click-N-Type virtual keyboard (on-screen keyboard) free software is an assistive technology for people with a physical disability involving motor skill impairment from spinal cord injuries, ALS, Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis or Stroke who cannot use a...
The old free standard for people who cannot use a physical keyboard. Still works, but development stopped years ago.
Worth a look if the built-in keyboard is not enough and you do not want to pay.
Wallaby-VK is a virtual on-screen keyboard for Linux systems running Wayland. It floats at the bottom of the screen, never steals focus, and types into whatever window you are working in — useful on touchscreens, on machines without a keyboard attached, for characters your own...
Another free option in this space.
A replacement for Windows' built in virtual touch keyboard. Includes many layouts, supports customization and gestures.
Paid, feature-heavy, aimed as much at touchscreen kiosks as at accessibility.
Comfort On-Screen Keyboard (Multilingual) Create YOUR ideal keyboard for easy and comfortable typing and controls for applications. It allows you to customize unique controls for every job and every application including special needs users.
Paid, long-established, with prediction and layout options.
Keyboard and mouse control with your eyes using an eye-tracking device or camera. Also, easy access to speech synthesis. This is useful for people with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or MND (Motor Neuron Disease).
Built for eye tracking, free and open source. The reference point if you control a computer with your eyes.
Dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, driven by natural continuous pointing gestures. Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used - for example,
Not a keyboard at all: you write by steering through letters. Takes practice, very fast once it clicks.
If a tool is missing here, tell me in the comments and I will add it.
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