Half-QWERTY Pro Keyboard

This assistive technology enables people who have lost the use of one hand to touch-type quickly using their existing touch-typing skills. This keyboard is a full size keyboard that allows you to touch-type with just your left hand, just your right hand, or both hands. This keyboard has been chosen by occupational therapists, insurance companies, workplace insurance boards, schools, governments and businesses for over 20 years for one-handedness, hemiplegia, blindness (reading a braille screen with one hand while typing with the other hand), as well as other conditions where typing with only one hand is required.

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Ideal for One-Handedness, Hemiplegia, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other hand-related injuries

The innovative Half-QWERTY Pro Keyboard from Matias is a standard desktop keyboard that allows those with limited or no use of one hand to continue typing with the other hand in an easy and natural manner.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other typing-related injuries don't always occur in both hands. In cases where only one hand is affected, you can type with the other hand, while the injured one heals. Half-QWERTY's innovative "skill transfer" design makes the transition fast and easy.

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Blindness

Used in conjunction with a Braille display, Half-QWERTY allows blind and visually impaired persons to read what they type as they are typing it, much as a seeing person would.

“...somehow your brain triggers the appropriate finger... Within 15 minutes, I could type 20 wpm...” MACWORLD

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How fast can I learn it?

If you've never learned to type before, learning Half-QWERTY will take roughly the time it would take to learn standard two-handed touch-typing.

However, if you are a trained touch-typist, you can learn Half-QWERTY in a matter of minutes, with little or no retraining.

Published empirical research (Matias, E., MacKenzie, I. S., & Buxton, W.  (1996).  One-handed touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard.  Human-Computer Interaction, 11(1), 1-27.)  has shown that (on average) a touch-typist can learn Half-QWERTY in 1/3 the time it takes to learn a one-handed chord keyboard. Half-QWERTY's innovative "skill transfer" design makes this possible.

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How fast can I type?

With practice, Half-QWERTY typists can expect to reach speeds of between 61% and 91% of those achievable by two-handed typists. Typing speeds as high as 64 words per minute (wpm) have been recorded.

"...The first one-handed keyboard that doesn't require learning a new way to type." WIRED

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How does it work?

The Half-QWERTY typing technique is very similar to the standard two-handed touch-typing technique...

You place your hand where it would normally be if you were touch-typing - that takes care of that half of the keyboard.

To type the letters of the other half, you hold down the space bar with your thumb and do the same finger movement that you would normally do with the other hand. It's that easy!

Tapping the space bar still types a space.

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Use either hand - or both

The Half-QWERTY Pro Keyboard allows one-handed typing using either hand, or both, just like a standard keyboard.

The one-handed typing capability can be switched on or off by the user, as desired, using the "matias" key.

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Can other people still use my keyboard?

Yes. The keyboard can still be used for two-handed typing. Half-QWERTY won't interfere.

"...I was blown away... almost no thought required to adapt to typing on it... From the get go, my fingers knew how to type..." THE-GADGETEER.COM

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The Matias Half-QWERTY Pro Keyboard is the latest version of the full-size Matias one-handed typing keyboard. It features Matias Quiet-Click mechanical switches for a better typing experience, has 3 USB 2.0 hub ports that provide a convenient spot to plug in a mouse, and includes two micro-USB to USB-A cables, so that you can choose the length of cable that best fits your assistive technology needs. (The micro-USB end of the cable plugs into the Matias keyboard, and the USB-A end of the cable plugs into the computer). The Matias Half-QWERTY Pro Keyboard replaces earlier versions of the Matias one-handed typing keyboard, including the Matias Half-QWERTY Keyboard (2001-2005), Matias 508 Keyboard (2005-2009), and Matias Half-QWERTY 508 Keyboard (2009-2021). All of these keyboards use the same proven technique for one-handed touch typing that has worked so well over the years for many people.  

Click here to have a demo software program (for Windows PC) immediately download to your computer. Once it's downloaded, click on the file to open it, and you can try out for yourself how the one-handed keyboard technology works using your existing keyboard:

https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/resources/downloads/1-Handed.exe

SPECIFICATIONS:

Dimensions: 18” x 6.5” x 1” (45 x 16 x 3.5 cm)

Weight: 2.8 lbs (1270 g)

Matias Quiet-Click Switches

Key Travel: 3.5 mm

Peak Switch Force: 60 g (+/- 5 g)

Cable Lengths: 6 feet (1.8 m) and 3 feet (0.9 m) 

In the Box: Keyboard, 2 micro-USB to USB-A cables, User manual

System Requirements: PC or Mac with USB port

Warranty: 5 years limited warranty

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