Microsoft On-Screen Keyboard
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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.
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Windows
Features
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Microsoft Licensing
Proprietary and Free product.Alternatives
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OS & Utilities
On-screen keyboards for people with limited hand mobility
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.
Comments and Reviews
It'll at least do its job, holding keys exactly as long as you hold down the mouse button, and when it works right it really works well. It even holds down modifier keys for you besides shift, e.g. ALT and WIN. For a Micros**t application,, it works pretty well... just as long as the active/target window isn't locking up the CPU, something Java seems to do habitually. it also likes to activate whatever window was active the last time you minimized it, which is something of a bug in detecting what was active prior. A fairly straightforward AutoHotkey script may be able to micromanage your window activity to correct this, but I have yet to find or write one. Next, at least as of upgrading my system to Windows 10, text prediction no longer seems to learn new words.
Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, this piece of software was developed by Microsoft, the same company that managed to bluescreen a computer when demonstrating a new feature (granted it was almost 2 decades and several operating systems ago), the same company that (not so long ago) developed Windows 8, and the same company bound to make many many more failures for the world of technology to facepalm, headdesk, grumble and groan about. As such, there's a good possibility that the application will, after some ill-fated update, render your entire system inoperable... so try it out for a while, but if you find something else that works as well, use that instead