New Chromebook feature will allow mouse movement with keyboard keys

Accessibility features on Chromebooks have continued to grow and evolve for years at this point, and it seems that growth is only set to continue. With great features like the powerful magnifier, speech-to-text dictation, ChromeVox screen reader, and system wide auto captions, Chromebooks are a great tool for a wide range of users with physical impairments that make standard computing a bit of a chore.

Another great ChromeOS feature

Adding to the list of established accessibility features, it seems s For those who have trouble operating a mouse or trackpad, this could come in very, very handy.

This new commit that was only added on February 22nd looks to give Chromebooks the option to use a handful of keyboard keys to move the mouse on-screen. Like a directional pad on a game controller, this new feature will allow users to move the mouse cursor without having to engage the trackpad or an external mouse.

From the looks of it, the keys that make a quasi-square (8,9,0,u,o,j,k,l) will be the 8 directions of movement with the “i” key at the center that will act as the mouse click. The entire experience will be called up with a quick shortcut (CTRL + SHIFT + M) for use when needed. Ideally, the moment the user no longer needs this, the same shortcut will return the keys mentioned above to their standard operation.

It’s a solid addition to the long list of ChromeOS accessibility features and one I’d love to weigh in on a bit if anyone from the ChromeOS team is reading this. For Chromebooks that have a numeric keypad included, that area should become the default “mouse keys” area since those keys are aligned perfectly for the 8-way directional task of moving a mouse on the screen: just my two cents. Either way, this is going to be a really cool, really useful addition once it lands.