Using a setting to “blur words”, sighted people can blur the lesson material on Typey type and use a screen reader to announce each word to practice transcription. This reads out each word from the lesson material one at a time only after you’ve successfully typed the previous one. In the future, I’d like to make a feature that reads out words ahead of where you’re at to mimic dictation and real-time captioning tasks where you need to “stay on top of the speaker” and not fall too far behind what they are saying.
For now, blur material offers two particular benefits for sighted stenographers. One benefit is relieving eye strain from staring at one point on the screen for extended periods. The other key benefit is to help sighted stenographers learn to write words based on how they sound instead of how they look or are spelled.
ROPE (Remembering Outlines in Plover more Easily) is a guide to learning and recalling Plover outlines for about 4,200 common English words. It does this in two ways: first, it relies on Anki's spaced repetition system to help you solidify the outlines in your memory. Second, it includes mnemonic devices (in the form of stories) for a sizeable chunk of the outlines. These stories, about 1790 in total as of 7/7/2018, serve to connect the outlines to their corresponding word by including words that are similar to the components of the outlines.
ROPE 2.1 also includes a number of added-in outlines (about 785 as of 7/7/2018) that serve as alternatives to the outlines in the standard Plover dictionary. They're meant to let you write words in fewer keypresses and/or strokes, but are completely optional, and standard outlines for every word are provided when available.
You can learn briefs shown as steno diagrams or as text
Practice writing multi-syllable words with doubled consonant letters
Use a wider layout so you can see what's coming up
A new "Exact spacing" setting to match spaces precisely—ideal for coding as well as prefix and suffix lessons
Accuracy scoring now counts hinted words separately
The "Ignore spaces" settings now considers " the", "the ", and "the" to be the same when reviewing words you've seen and deciding what material to show, making sure you don't see words more than you have to
The parts weren't very expensive. It's a knock-off Arduino, about 32 Gateron switches, custom keycaps and PCB, spray-painted and screwed into a piece of particle board. It took a LOT of time to assemble though, milling the PCB and hand-cutting the keycaps. I milled out one set of each keycap on a CNC machine, then made molds of those. The mold casting process still required me to cut all the keys to the right height by hand, along with an obscene (obsessive-level) amount of sanding and polishing.
The idea was stolen from Charley, the internals - from OLKB/Planck project. I stumbled upon an old mechanical machine, so had a chance to compare the Stenograph keyboard feelings you mentioned in some articles with the computer switches. I measured the size of keys and tried to re-created their form. The link to the project is in the Thingiverse article, it is rather primitive - holes laid out, the case is built around them to fit the switches. The controller fits nicely in the empty space under the right palm. Case is connected with stand-offs and screws from both top and down parts.
Component prices (approximate) - one ProMicro chip (10CAD), 23 Matias switches (10CAD), 2xUSB connectors (10CAD), 23 diodes (2CAD), USB cable (5CAD), screws and stand-offs (say 3CAD). PLA plastic - 200 grams, about 5CAD. Some wire, and old micro-USB cable to connect the chip to USB connector. 50CAD in total.
Using a new “Start from word” setting, you can skip ahead to the 20,000th word to try long sentences. Together with “Limit word count”, you can drill ranges like top 1000–2000 words.
Thanks to Plover software, a closet full of Stentura 400SRTs, and an investment in tablets from our administration, the Judicial Reporting program at Midstate College was able to bring a hands-on steno exhibit to the Career Spark event at the Peoria Civic Center. Over the course of two days, 4,000 eighth grade students from over 60 area schools poured out of school buses and eagerly explored each of the four large exhibit areas. In the Law, Government, and Public Service zone, students had plenty of interesting things to see with fire trucks, police motorcycles, snowplows, an ambulance, and a utility line setup. But the steno machines really drew the students in with many returning for a second visit before their time in our zone was up. We also looped the Steno Arcade “I’m your Moon” video on a big monitor – a great draw for 14-year-olds!
Because of Plover software, we were able to invest in inexpensive Windows 10 tablets and let the students get their hands on machines to try realtime. There were aha! moments, triumphal shouts of “I got a word!!” and for many, we were able to help them draw a connection between live captions they had seen on sporting games and news in restaurants and the idea of a person on a steno machine generating those. We had a great opportunity to talk to them about careers in official, freelance, CART, and captioning domains, about the huge need for reporters, and about the earning potential one could realize with a two-year degree. Our thanks to Plover for doing just what you set out to do...making steno accessible in an affordable way so people can try it.
