LAURA PALMARO: Hi, my name is Laura and I’m on the Chrome accessibility team at Google.
In this video, I’m going to show you some of the built-in features on your Chromebook
that may help if you find it difficult to use your touchpad or type on the physical
keyboard.
To get started, let’s open the Chromebook accessibility settings.
To get started, I open up the Chrome OS settings page to go to the accessibility section.
To do this, I press Alt+Shift+S or click the Status Tray in the lower righthand corner
and choose Settings.
Now I can either click the Advanced Settings link at the bottom of the page and then scroll
down a little, or I can simply type “accessibility” into the search field.
First, I’m going to turn on sticky keys.
“Sticky” means that when I use keyboard shortcuts, I can type keys in sequence so
I don’t have to hold them down.
This is helpful if you use the keyboard with only one hand.
These keys are Control, Alt, Shift, and Search.
Most Chromebook shortcuts start with one of these.
Notice that as I press the keys, a small box appears on screen, and spotlighting shows
which sticky keys I’ve pressed so far.
I can even use sticky keys to write text.
Say I want to type in all caps.
With sticky keys on, I press Shift two times.
In the box on the left, the highlighted key is now underlined.
If I want to make a pressed key unsticky, I press it a third time.
Now both the spotlighting and underlining are gone.
Next, I’m going to turn on tap-dragging, which is pretty much how it sounds: using
your finger on the trackpad to drag different items on the screen.
This is particularly helpful if it’s a challenge to physically push down on the trackpad in
order to click or move items around on the screen.
Before I first start to use tap-dragging, I want to make sure the tap-to-click setting
is on, as these two settings work hand-in-hand.
So I go to the Chrome OS settings again, and under Devices, I click Touchpad Settings.
The box for tap-to-click is checked, so I’m good to go.
With this setting, I can lightly tap my finger on the touchpad to click an object, without
having to put physical pressure down on the trackpad.
Next, I make sure tap-dragging is selected under Accessibility settings.
Now if I want to rearrange icons on this shelf in the lower left corner, for example.
I tap my finger on the touchpad once to select an icon, and then right away I tap my finger
again, this time leaving my finger pressed on the trackpad.
And now I drag my finger to move it.
This is basically a double-tap and drag.
Another built-in accessibility feature is automatic clicks.
With automatic clicks, I can use my mouse cursor to navigate to something that’s clickable
on the screen, and if I hover over the item for a given amount of time, Chrome OS clicks
it for me.
This way, I don’t have to use any physical pressure on the touchpad or on the mouse itself
to click.
I can turn it on by clicking the checkbox, and then I hover my mouse pointer over the
button to customize how long it pauses.
Notice it opens the menu and blue and green circles target where Chrome OS is going to
click.
In high contrast mode, they may look purple and yellow.
As I move along the Settings page, note how automatic clicking can help me click checkboxes,
too.
I’ll go ahead and turn this off for now.
Now I want to show you a few settings for your physical keyboard.
First let’s open the Chrome OS Settings...
Then I scroll down and open the keyboard settings.
This is where I can adjust the keyboard repeat rate.
With this, I can adjust how long I need to press a key before it repeats…
...how fast the key press should repeat…
...or even turn off auto-repeat so that I have to press a key each time.
Okay, I’m going to open up the Chrome OS Settings again…
…then click Show Advanced Settings…
...And click Language and Input Settings.
From here, I’ll click this Configure button.
Here, I can turn on features like auto-capitalization and word prediction.
First I have to make sure I’ve turned auto-correction on.
Notice that I can choose whether auto-correction should be set to modest or aggressive.
Word prediction and auto-capitalization can help me type faster and more accurately by
reducing how much typing I have to do.
When suggestions are available, like when typing in a gmail draft, an underline with
an arrow will appear.
I can press the down arrow to view the suggestions, and press enter to accept.
Note that this functionality does not yet work within the G Suite apps.
Word prediction and auto-capitalization are also available in this next feature: an on-screen
keyboard.
Let’s open that now.
In the Chrome OS settings, I click this checkbox, and a small icon appears at the bottom of
my Chromebook screen.
Pressing this icon opens up the keyboard.
It also automatically appears when my cursor is in a text entry field.
Now I can use the mouse to type.
Or, if I have a touch screen, I can also use my fingers or another pointing device.
To turn on word prediction and auto-correction, I open up the Chrome OS Settings again…
...Show advanced settings…
...Click Language and Input Settings again…
...And click that Configure button one more time.
The virtual keyboard has its own settings, so even if you turned these functions on for
your physical keyboard, you still have to turn them on for the virtual keyboard.
The virtual keyboard also works well with those sticky keys I showed you earlier.
While this is open, there’s one last feature I want to show you, and that’s voice input.
You’ll need the virtual keyboard open in order to access it.
I simply click on the microphone icon in the upper righthand corner of the on-screen keyboard,
then I speak to input text.
When it’s on, I can speak to enter text, like in a gmail message.
Note that Google Docs has its own built-in dictation and voice commands called Voice
Typing.
It’s a little bit more robust for writing documents, so I’d definitely recommend checking
it out.
So, we covered a handful of different features to make your physical keyboard and touchpad
easier to use.
Did you see any that you find helpful?
To provide our team with feedback or ask questions about any of the topics you’ve seen today,
join our Google group and send us an email at chromebook-accessibility@googlegroups.com.
If you have any questions about Google accessibility as a whole, find out more at Google.com/accessibility.
To sign up for user studies to explore new features and help shape Google products, visit
us at Google.com/usability.
Also, look out for other videos on ways to make Chrome and Chromebooks easier to use.
Again, I’m Laura and on behalf of myself and the Chrome Accessibility Team, thanks
for watching!