Hello everyone,
I am the developer of BigKeys, a third-party keyboard for iPhone that I released on the App Store last week. I wrote to the AppleVis team to ask whether it was appropriate to post about it here and was kindly told to go ahead. I would like to be straightforward about what it is, who it is not for, and what I could use help with.
Who this is not for
If you are totally blind, BigKeys has nothing to offer you. It makes keys bigger, and bigger keys are worth nothing if you are not looking at them. Apple's own keyboard with Touch Typing is already the better tool. I would rather say that plainly than have someone spend money to find it out.
It is built for people with usable but limited sight: macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, cataracts, or eyes that simply no longer cope with a key the size of a grain of rice. If that is not you, it may be someone you advise.
What it does
Each row of the standard keyboard is split across two rows, so every key is about twice as wide. There are three sizes, the largest roughly three times the standard key, with the letters growing to match.
Nothing is typed when you touch a key. You hold your finger down and the letter appears above it, very large. If it is the wrong one you slide to the right one and let go. Only the key under your finger at lift-off is typed.
Colour schemes are yellow on black, white on black, black on yellow, black on white, or following the system.
It can speak each key as your finger passes over it, and each word as you finish it.
Ten languages live in one keyboard: English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian and Arabic, including right to left.
Under VoiceOver
This is the part I expect this forum to care about most, so here is what was actually tested, on a physical iPhone rather than in the simulator.
The keys are drawn shapes rather than system controls, so nothing about them is accessible unless it was made so deliberately. Early on they published no accessibility elements at all, and that surfaced only because an automated query came back empty. It is now guarded by tests that run Apple's own accessibility audit against the keyboard on every build.
Every key carries a label and the keyboard-key trait, which is what makes them eligible for Touch Typing. What that gets you:
Touch Typing works. Rest a finger, slide, lift, and the key under your finger at lift-off is inserted, and only that one. This was the thing that worried me most, because BigKeys' own lift-off model and VoiceOver's Touch Typing both want the same gesture. Under VoiceOver the keyboard's own gesture recogniser never sees the touches at all, so the two do not fight.
Standard typing style works too. Focus a key, double-tap, character inserted.
Control keys are announced in the keyboard's own language.
Accented characters are on the rotor, under Actions. Long press never fires under VoiceOver, so the rotor is the only route to them.
The magnifier announces nothing and adds nothing to the rotor. It only repeats the key already under your finger, so it would be pure noise.
The keyboard's own key speech switches itself off while VoiceOver is running, because two voices reading the same letter is worse than one. Word announcements stay on, posted at low priority so they queue behind VoiceOver rather than cutting it off.
Suggestions in the prediction strip announce as "word, suggestion", so they are distinct from the letter keys.
If any of that does not behave as described on your device, I would genuinely like to hear about it. A claim like this is only worth anything if someone checks it.
Full Access
BigKeys never asks for Full Access. Not "asks for it but works without it". There is no switch at all. You can check: Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, BigKeys. There is nothing there to turn on.
That is a structural promise rather than a policy one. Without Full Access iOS does not permit a keyboard extension to reach the network at all, so nothing you type can go anywhere even if I wanted it to. There is no account, no server and no analytics inside the keyboard. Word prediction learns on the device and stays there.
Two limitations worth knowing before you buy
Password fields always fall back to Apple's keyboard. That is an iOS rule applying to every third-party keyboard and not something any developer can change.
iPhone only at the moment. There is no iPad version yet.
Price, and codes
It is $5.99, paid once. No subscription, no in-app purchases, nothing to unlock later.
I have promo codes, and I would rather they went to people here than anywhere else. Particularly anyone with low vision who would put it through real daily use, and anyone who wants to test the VoiceOver behaviour above against what I have claimed. Reply here or message me and I will send you one. No review is expected in return. If it turns out not to be useful to you, saying so in this thread is worth more to me than silence.
One last request. Nine of the ten languages were built against Apple's own layout data but have never been read by a native speaker. If you type in Arabic, Portuguese or Russian and something about the layout is wrong, that is exactly the kind of thing I cannot find on my own.
Thanks to the AppleVis team for the go-ahead, and thanks for reading.