Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

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Showing posts with label assistive technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assistive technology. Show all posts

Sunday, 3 April 2011

Oops button for computers

My mum once suggested to me that there should be an 'oops' button on her computer so that she'd be able to click it and see whatever it was that she'd done that made something go a bit wrong.

Sounds like a brilliant idea.

I can do Ctrl Z one or more times to undo whatever it is that I've done by accident but sometimes my mum was a bit flummoxed by her computer, with the cursor leaping about somewhere, or a toolbar opening or disappearing unexpectedly. Her laptop's 'synaptic pointing device' (the bit you have in front of the spacebar if you don't have a mouse) was a bit too sensitive perhaps.

For less confident users, a button that you can press which will tell you what steps have recently been taken might be quite helpful. This information is evidently accessible, after all Ctrl+Z wouldn't work without it, and I understand there are malicious programmes which can harvest keystrokes.

Is there something hidden on computers that can be brought to the fore? It would need also to record inadvertent mouse clicks too (eg if you accidentally clicked on a link and couldn't understand why, not realising that when you clicked into another window the bit you clicked on was an active link).