This one occured to me when I broke a finger of my left hand playing bowling ball tag. Of course I usually type with both hands. But even with one hand incapacitated, I still have to work... so with my right hand I do a kind of wacky finger dance over the keyboard as though I'm performing a complex Rachmaninoff piano concerto on the QWERTY. I can still type fairly well with one hand. But - it's terribly awkward doing Shift and Alt and Ctrl combinations and maintaining the flow of typing.
Why do those keys have to be on the keyboard, anyways? They would work great as foot pedals. As a pianist, I know that after a while you learn to use pedals intuitively and you don't even think about what your feet are doing. Capitalizing a letter? you just tap on the pedal as you type in an uninterrupted flow.
Keyboard manufacturers should make keyboards with ports in the back, to which you can connect optional pedal controllers, the way they do with electronic piano keyboards.-- gonzola, Aug 19 2003 (?) NXPEDS http://www.nxpeds.com/Baked [krelnik, Oct 17 2004] Bilbo Step On It http://www.bilbo.com/Baked [krelnik, Oct 17 2004] Xkeys http://www.ymouse.c...ges/wpxfps2spec.htmBaked [krelnik, Oct 17 2004] Bowling Ball Tag (and other bowling games -- a PDF) https://www.sportim...ripbowler_adapt.pdfThe student with the bowling ball is IT. The IT player must have his/her fingersin the ball and tag another person with their other hand. Once tagged, IT givesthe ball to the tagged player by using the holes of the ball only, and the tagged player becomes IT. [pnewp, Oct 17 2004] This appears to have been baked by a number of vendors, almost exactly as you describe. They are mostly sold into vertical markets like medical transcription, or as adjuncts to PC based gaming. Some even allow you to daisy-chain them to have as many pedals as you like. See links below.
Its always a good idea to use a search engine to see if your idea has been done already before posting. Good try, though. I like your writing style alot, especially the line about the Rachmaninoff concerto.
Welcome to the bakery.-- krelnik, Aug 19 2003 <car dies> Where's that darn delete pedal again?-- RayfordSteele, Aug 19 2003 random, halfbakery