Keywords: repetitive stress injury, carpal tunnel syndrome, keyboard, mouse, customization, mouth stick, AccessX, XKB
[The following text is based on the SGI AccessX man page.]
The SGI AccessX product (also known as "Access for Movement-Impaired Users") is a graphical application that allows movement-impaired users to set and activate special keyboard features. It uses the XKB extension built into the X server in IRIX 6.2 and later releases. The SGI AccessX panel can be run from a Unix shell command line (type "accessx") or from the toolchest (Desktop > Customize > Accessibility).
The SGI AccessX software features a small main Status window
(shown) and an accompanying Settings window. 
The
Status window changes in response to the user's key presses. It
always shows which mouse button is currently the default, and updates
its visual symbols in real time when the user switches the default
mouse button and when the user presses, latches (holds down), and
releases the default mouse button and modifier keys. The modifier
symbol designs are based on a set of internationally recognized icons
(ISO9995-7 standard).
The following special keyboard features are configurable:
Users can define and save groups of settings as profiles. These
profiles are saved in each user's
$HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/accessx directory. If
this directory is not readable and writable, then the user may still
set and activate customized settings, but they will not be remembered
across login sessions.
The SGI AccessX product ships with IRIX 6.5 and later releases, so SGI customers will find it on their IRIX 6.5 Applications CD. The SGI AccessX graphical user interface uses the XKB extension built into the X server in IRIX 6.2 and later releases. Unfortunately, SGI AccessX isn't available for IRIX 6.2 because it would require substantial changes to SGI's 6.2 X libraries implementation.
Similar products exist on non-SGI platforms, including Apple, Digital, Sun, and Microsoft Windows. The SGI AccessX user interface design is copyright 1997-1999, Silicon Graphics, Inc.
The ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.3/xc/doc/hardcopy/XKB/
directory contains printable PostScript documentation for the X
keyboard extension. These explain the programmer's interface (API)
and can thus help programmers to write their own applications that use
the extension in the same way that SGI AccessX does. For convenience,
here are two relevant documents about XKB (in PostScript), though they
may be somewhat out of date:
For example, Stephen Montgomery-Smith at the University of Missouri-Columbia has written an application that uses StickyKeys on IRIX 6.2. On his Web site he offers free C source code.
For more information about making information technology more usable for everyone, please visit The Trace Research & Development Center site.
SGI thanks Mark Novak at the Trace Center and Robert Malone at Lockheed for their generous feedback, as well as Erik Fortune (now at WebTV) who was instrumental in getting the SGI AccessX project off the ground. And thank you for your interest. If you use SGI AccessX and would like to request an enhancement or post a bug, please email me.