Has anyone here tried overlays with touch devices?

[MarjaE]

Hi,

I've mentioned before that I have coordination issues, and haven't been able to use touch devices without accidental tapping, missed tapping, and accidental gestures.

There are various overlays that are supposed to help, I'm wondering if anyone has experience with them.

One style of overlay uses small bumps to add to the feel of the screen. For example, the TacScreen. This style can probably be adapted to any tablet and any software. That still leaves me wondering if it's enough.

Another style uses cut-outs to limit taps to specific spots. That is obviously limited to a single device and set of software.

With glowing screens, a blue or green overlay may also help reduce red light. With e-ink and lcd screens, that may not be necessary.

[Quoth]

It's excessive blue that's usually a problem on any solid state illumination, not red. Most LCD are as problematic as OLED because OLED are not "real" LEDs like used in indicators and large hall displays, they use phosphors that are less good than CRT phosphors, but better than the dye filters on LED panels. Really old LED panels use phosphor coated (on inside) CCFL tubes (even 1st Nokia Communicators and Monitors/TVs for many years later), but current LCDs use blue/violet LED backlights with yellow phosphor for white lighting. Only very expensive LCD panels use R G B LEDs.
The front lights on eInk are either blue/violet LED with yellow phosphor or a mixture with some being orange LEDs. They at at the edge.

The yellow phosphors age and give less light, so the "white" gradually takes on a purplely/violet/blue hue. Except OLED may ALSO have blue phosphors which age faster!

Any overlay will make the capacitive touch less sensitive, make resistive touch much less sensitive and may stop IR touch working, depending on screen design.

Use volume buttons as page turn on a Tablet/Phone and have a larger (7" to 8") eink with page turn buttons. Setting font size and line space setting a bit larger helps if you are doing a lot of highlighting or annotation.

[Sirtel]

A stylus should help too (yes, I use a stylus with all my ereaders. Not with my phone, though).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Hi,

I've mentioned before that I have coordination issues, and haven't been able to use touch devices without accidental tapping, missed tapping, and accidental gestures.

There are various overlays that are supposed to help, I'm wondering if anyone has experience with them.

One style of overlay uses small bumps to add to the feel of the screen. For example, the TacScreen. This style can probably be adapted to any tablet and any software. That still leaves me wondering if it's enough.

Another style uses cut-outs to limit taps to specific spots. That is obviously limited to a single device and set of software.

With glowing screens, a blue or green overlay may also help reduce red light. With e-ink and lcd screens, that may not be necessary.

One think you can do is get a Kobo Reader. With a Kobo, you can set page turns to having to swipe. So if you accidentally touch the page turn zones you won't turn the page. Two of the current devices have page turn buttons that you can use if you find that easier for page turns. Kindles do not have an option for swiping for page turns so that is why I would say a Kindle is not good for your condition.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

. Kindles do not have an option for swiping for page turns

yes they do

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/c...uide_en-GB.pdf

"If you prefer, you can change pages by swiping the screen with your finger. To go to the next page, swipe your finger from right to left across the screen. To go to the previous page, swipe your finger from left to right across the screen"

and recent models let you have swipe only, with tap disabled.

https://www.amazonforum.com/s/questi...le-touchscreen

don't believe " facts" about Kindles from Kindle haters

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stumped

yes they do

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/c...uide_en-GB.pdf

"If you prefer, you can change pages by swiping the screen with your finger. To go to the next page, swipe your finger from right to left across the screen. To go to the previous page, swipe your finger from left to right across the screen"

and recent models let you have swipe only, with tap disabled.

https://www.amazonforum.com/s/questi...le-touchscreen

don't believe " facts" about Kindles from Kindle haters

I'm talking an option to set swiping for page turns so tapping cannot accidentally change the page. Kindle doe snot have this.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm talking an option to set swiping for page turns so tapping cannot accidentally change the page. Kindle doe snot have this.

yes they do

recent models let you have swipe only, with tap disabled.

https://www.amazonforum.com/s/questi...le-touchscreen

[MarjaE]

As far as gestures, accidental pinch-zoom was my worst challenge. It was hard to avoid, and it would trigger my migraines. I understand why small screens need easy scrolling and zooming gestures, it's just I need an option to disable them. Accidental taps were also annoying, of course.

Excessive red can be a problem:

With epilepsy-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10487169

Without-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9163847

Blue-tinted sunglasses can help a bit too.

A lot of styli are designed for a type of grip I can't use. A touchscreen glove should avoid that, but I'm allergic to latex and spandex, and have had trouble with gloves advertised as 100% cotton which turn out to be 2% spandex.

[4691mls]

Kobo has a light color adjustment so you can set it more blue or orange. Of course you can also just turn the light off and rely on overhead lighting if a lit screen is a problem for you.

Coming from a Sony that had pinch/zoom I was disappointed that my Clara didn't, but it sounds like lack of pinch/zoom is a good thing for you.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Coming from a Sony that had pinch/zoom I was disappointed that my Clara didn't, but it sounds like lack of pinch/zoom is a good thing for you.

I am pretty sure all Kobos have pinch zoom, but only for PDF

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/artic...r-Kobo-eReader

Zooming in and out of PDFs on your Kobo eReader
You can zoom in to a particular area of a page in a PDF file to see more details.

While reading your PDF, tap the centre of the screen. The Reading Menu will appear.
Tap the Navigation icon.
To zoom in and out of the page:
Drag the slider at the bottom of the screen to zoom in and out, then drag your finger on the screen to pan around the page.
Pinch the area of the screen that you'd like to zoom in and out of.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by stumped

I am pretty sure all Kobos have pinch zoom, but only for PDF

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/artic...r-Kobo-eReader

Zooming in and out of PDFs on your Kobo eReader
You can zoom in to a particular area of a page in a PDF file to see more details.

While reading your PDF, tap the centre of the screen. The Reading Menu will appear.
Tap the Navigation icon.
To zoom in and out of the page:
Drag the slider at the bottom of the screen to zoom in and out, then drag your finger on the screen to pan around the page.
Pinch the area of the screen that you'd like to zoom in and out of.

Yeah, I was thinking of epubs which is what I read.
I don't think the OP specified which format of books they read, but they should take this into consideration if they care about pinch/zoom.

[MarjaE]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Yeah, I was thinking of epubs which is what I read.
I don't think the OP specified which format of books they read, but they should take this into consideration if they care about pinch/zoom.

Both, but my old devices are good for epub and mobi.

[JSWolf]

Kobo does not have pinch/zoom for ePub. Kobo has more options for setting line hight, font size, and margins so things can be set to what's most comfortable. Kindle has limited settings and limited font size options.