Artificial Ants for the Optimization of Virtual Keyboard Arrangement for Disabled People

Many physically impaired people can meet difficulties whenusing a computer and particularly with the keyboard. Often, a virtualkeyboard can improve the usability of the computer system by handicappedpeople and can be adapted to their disabilities. From a combinatorialpoint of view, artificial ants have been studied to improve classicalkeyboard arrangements. This paper present how this method can fit thefirst problem and then become a tool to build new "tailor-made" keyboards.Then, the artificial ants meta-heuristic can be used as often asneeded as an optimizer that take into account user's activities of writing.