Which keyboard keys are internationally available and easily accessed? [closed]

Question

When developing software for public use, it is important to ensure that it is designed with consideration for a variety of setups.

How much does the keyboard vary across different layouts? Can all characters be relied on to exist? Like the backtick:

`

And can keys such as the backtick be easily reached by all users?

I'm unable to find a resource that gives thorough information on this.

Answer 1

I was working on a similar project few weeks ago, there are a few tips that might be usefull for you:

1. First ensure that your app will be able to hand those characters, using an encoding like UTF-8 to take from arabic to russian characters.

2. The users are very comfortable so make sure to give them different options like:

   1. You can simply map the keys that are not common between all keyboard layouts like ñ á ç to keyboard shortcuts like Shift+n = ñ

   2. If your app does relly on physical touch keyboard give a look to Swift Key keyboard, an android app that lets the user pick the layout, spanish layout now:

and with a swipe on the language you can chose another language of your choice:

notice the layout changed as ñ is not there anymore.

3. Or maybe even easier for users, do a shortcut so that a panel with all the missing characters from the actual user keyboard layout appear so they can press them with a click (inserting the clicked character to cursor position).

Answer 2

Other answers cover the some of the range of layouts you could be faced with trying to make your input only the lowest common denominator. I think you can't trust what the user might have on their keyboard. The options are so wide. For most software you can make assumptions but that isn't 100% coverage.

One thing many developers add is the ability to map the keys to the function. For instance WSAD or the arrow keys for moving a game character is common and the player can choose one of these options or any other keys they wish.

Rather than worry about what they have, try to support a wide range of characters and let the user map their keys.