On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 4:31 PM, Matt Campbell mattcampbell@pobox.com wrote:
It occurred to me that for blind people, who use a screen reader such as Speakup or Orca, a laptop housing without the screen or the touchpad would be quite convenient.
I don't know anyone in that situation personally, but it's not clear to me that the touchpad should go. Sure, using it for pointing input is unhelpful with no screen, but I would expect it could still be useful for gesture input, right?
Seems there's not much benefit from removing the touchpad, as it doesn't buy you any space savings, and it should have pretty small impact on battery life compared to the screen. (Especially if you can run it as input without powering the touchpad display -- I assume this is possible, but haven't really looked.) So I wonder if even a little usefulness for gesture input means it should stay.
Benson