I have a friend who cannot speak, so she carries a "letter board" with
her.  The letters A-Z are arranged alphabetically on this board, and
she points to the letters in sequence to form words.  Is there a more
optimal arrangement for the letters that would minimize the distance
her finger would have to travel when forming English words?  I imagine
that rarely-used letters would be tucked away in the corners, and the
letters used in common digraphs (th, ch, sh, qu, etc.) would be
arranged close together, or common digraphs might have dedicated
spaces.

I suppose this might be similar to the Atomik (tm) stylus-based keypad
arrangement IBM developed a while back for mobile devices
(http://www.almaden.ibm.com/software/images/ATOMIK.gif).

---

Clarification of Question by gw-ga on 25 Oct 2004 08:36 PDT

silver777: Sorry, the photo I linked to is the only one I know of in
existance -- I haven't personally seen one of these up-close.  My
friend's board has six rows and six columns, enough room for the
letters and the digits 0-9.  At this point I don't know whether she
will be receptive to trying an alternate arrangement for the letters
or not, since it may be frustrating to re-learn the positions.  So at
the moment this is more of a thought exercise, that I will bring to
her attention if and when I find something promising.  I am personally
interested in researching an optimal arrangement for other purposes,
even if she choses not to use it herself.

fj: The letter board is just a sheet of plastic with stickers applied.
 As she points, people around her will occasionally guess the rest of
the word, and when they do so correctly, she skips to the beginning of
the next word.  She does not have movement restrictions, however if I
were in her situation, I would have a strong preference for an
optimized layout (I say this as a user of the Dvorak keyboard layout,
rather than the standard Qwerty layout).

Hi Gw,

I can't clearly make out the characters on the photo you provided.

Is your friend's board suitable to set up just 3 rows, as in the
Qwerty keyboard, with numerals along the top or grouped below?

Also, please ask her to test out the following. Digraphs aside, the
English alphabet in order of frequency is ETOANIRSHDLCWUMFYGPBVKXQJZ.
How about sorting them in a spiral fashion from the centre of the
board? The least used letters will then be toward the extremity of the
board.

Regards, Phil

Does your friend spell out the words in full? eg FRIEND = F-R-I-E-N-D
or does she use predictive text as available on most mobile phones?
i.e. only have to point to 8 keys to get all 26 letters, so FRIEND
would be 3-7-4-3-6-3. I don't know if such a system is used for those
people who have communication difficulties, but it strikes me as a
very efficient way to build words.

I get the impression from your question that the 'letter board' is not
an electronic device? Does your friend also have movement
restrictions?