Fleksy is an app available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to help blind or partially sighted people type quicker. I've been using this for about a month now, and it is great.
When you first open Fleksy, it brings up a normal QWERTY keyboard, but instead of holding and dragging your finger around the screen for ever waiting for VoiceOver to speak the right letters, you tap just once on roughly where you think the letters are, and the auto-correction is so accurate, it can figure out what your trying to type even if you don't get any of the letters right.
Although all the letters are in a QWERTY keyboard layout, there are a few changes, such as the lack of a space bar at the bottom of the keyboard. Instead you swipe to the right with one finger to enter a space. So when you've finished typing a word, you swipe to the right and this will enter a space, and also correct and speak what it thinks you've typed. If it has used the right word you can just carry on typing. If the app has made a mistake, you swipe down with one finger and each time you swipe down it will go through list of suggestions. You can just carry on typing again when you hear the correct word. There are also some variations to the way punctuation is used compared to a normal, QWERTY keyboard.
Although this probably sounds a bit weird and confusing, it is really easy to get the hang of.
I use this app all the time for just texting my friends or web searching, and it really has speeded up my typing .
You can get this on the app store for free, but the free version will only let you enter text in the app to see how it works. If you like how it works you can buy the full version for £2.99 and you have a choice of what you can do with the text.
You can copy it and paste it into any app you want. You can send it as a text or email, and you can also put it as your Facebook and Twitter status.
Have you been using any apps that have helped you use iPhones or iPads? If so, let me know below.
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