Automatic clicks

You’re looking at the blog of a happy camper.  There was an update today to Chrome OS that seems to have cured the crashing issue when it was put to sleep.  I can’t imagine how difficult it is to write an operating system for so many different processors.  Even this unit which has a MediaTek processor which I’d never heard of before I saw the unit at an Acer booth at the Bring IT, Together Conference.  There seems to be a permanent difference between browser and operating system settings as well.  As long as you know the rules, you can play, right?

Now that it’s reliable again, I’ve had time to play around with various settings.  One thing I learned with working with the Special Education department is that there are interesting settings to be found when you look at Accessibility.  Their motto, at times, was “Essential for Some, Good for All”.  I’ll admit that I’ve had a history of ignoring Accessibility settings because I had just made some assumptions that I probably shouldn’t.

With this release, I headed to the Settings and found a setting for “Automatic Clicks”.  When activated, it looks like this and it floats over top of things on the screen.

The item on the far right moves this toolbar around the screen into the four corners so that you can position it to get it out of the way or to make it easily accessible.  All of the options are selected and activated just by hovering over top of them.  A little circle appears around the cursor indicating that something is about to happen.  What happens?

From left to right:

• left mouse click
• right mouse click
• double click
• click and drag
• scroll
• no action (turns everything off)

Then, you use your computer and the action you chose is the default action when you use it in your workspace.

I’ll admit; using this feature took a bit of learning.  I’ve never had to work in this environment before.  But, after a while, it did start to make sense.  I can see how it can be helpful for some computer users.

Does anyone have suggestions about how best to use this feature?  Or, any of the other Accessibility settings?