Typey Type Top 100 and 1000 Drills, Plus Blur

Typey Type for Stenographers keeps getting better. Now there are drills for the top 100 and top 1000 words, as well as a new custom lesson feature, and a fascinating "blur" feature, which allows you to use a screen reader (I recommend the open source NVDA) to turn the text-based drills into dictation.

Di says:

Using a setting to “blur words”, sighted people can blur the lesson material on Typey type and use a screen reader to announce each word to practice transcription. This reads out each word from the lesson material one at a time only after you’ve successfully typed the previous one. In the future, I’d like to make a feature that reads out words ahead of where you’re at to mimic dictation and real-time captioning tasks where you need to “stay on top of the speaker” and not fall too far behind what they are saying.

For now, blur material offers two particular benefits for sighted stenographers. One benefit is relieving eye strain from staring at one point on the screen for extended periods. The other key benefit is to help sighted stenographers learn to write words based on how they sound instead of how they look or are spelled.

Screen readers have a bit of a learning curve, but honestly I recommend them to any sighted user who wants to gain some proficiency and understanding of what it's like to use a computer without using your eyes. Give it a try and report back on how it worked for you!