There are several different kinds of keyboards for PCs. The most common type is a physical, external keyboard that plugs into your PC. But Windows has a built-in Accessibility tool called the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) that can be used instead of a physical keyboard.
You don’t need a touchscreen to use the OSK. It displays a visual keyboard with all the standard keys, so you can use your mouse or another pointing device to select keys, or use a physical single key or group of keys to cycle through the keys on the screen.
When you turn on OSK, a keyboard that can be used to move around the screen and enter text will appear on the screen. The keyboard will remain on the screen until you close it (turn off).
With the OSK open, you can click/tap on the Options key, and choose the options you want:
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) for your account in Windows 11.
An access key is an underlined character in the text of a menu, context menu item, or the label of a control such as a button.
You can press and hold the Shift, Alt, or F10 key while you right click on an item to see available access keys underlined in the context menu. You can then press the underlined letter (access key) as a keyboard shortcut to use/open that menu item.
If you like, you can turn on to always have access keys underlined even when not holding Shift, Alt, or F10 key while you right click to open a context menu.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off always underline access keys for your account in Windows 11.
In Windows, you can change your keyboard layout to type in another language or input method you want to use..
The language of your keyboard layout controls the characters that appear on your screen when you type. By using the different layouts, you can type all the characters for the language, including diacritics such as the umlaut (ä) in German and the tilde (ñ) in Spanish.
When you add a language, the default keyboard layout for the language will be installed by default.
You can install additional keyboards for language-specific key layouts and input options. Adding an input language lets you set a language-preference order for websites and apps, as well as change your keyboard language.
When you have more than one language and/or keyboard layout installed, you can change your keyboard layout via the Language Bar or press the Win + Spacebar keys to cycle through all your installed keyboards.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove a keyboard layout for input language for your account in Windows 11.
Keyboard shortcuts are keys or combinations of keys that provide another way to do something that you’d typically do with a mouse.
This tutorial will provide you with a list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows, accessibility, and apps in Windows 11.
Some keyboards include additional keys on them that when pressed will open a Windows app or perform a specific action (command). The app keys available will vary per keyboard model, but the most common are Calculator, Mail, Mute volume, Search, and default Web Browser.
This tutorial will show you how to disable or change which app or action an app key on a keyboard will run when pressed in Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.
If your Windows device has a hardware keyboard, you can change the character repeat delay and rate for when you press and hold down a key.
The repeat delay is the pause between pressing a key and when it starts repeating.
The repeat rate is the speed at which it repeats.
This tutorial will show you how to change the keyboard character repeat delay and rate for your account in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.