QWERTY keyboard conformance is a special feature of WintextCom Personal Information Manager(tm) Braille keyboard support that allows shifting of characters on the Braille input keyboard to emulate the use of the QWERTY keys on the main keyboard in standard typing mode.

When typing on the computer keyboard, certain characters are typed by pressing the Shift key in combination with other characters. For example, an exclamation mark is typed by pressing Shift+1. Normally, Braille keyboard input uses dot combinations to represent all characters, and shifting characters that do not distinguish between upper- and lowercase has no effect. This standard mode of Braille keyboard operation is called Braille character mode and is the default Braille input mode with WTC, it can be explicitly set with the "c" option in the driver configuration string.

In QWERTY or computer keyboard conformance mode, shifting of characters to produce the corresponding character that would result in standard typing is enabled. You can enable this mode with the "k" option in the driver configuration string. When computer keyboard conformance is enabled, an exclamation mark, for example can be generated by shifting the Braille equivalent of the number 1 by any of the methods described in the previous section on key modifies.

Computer keyboard conformance can be useful for those who are using the Braille keyboard but are used to the QWERTY environment and find that use of the Shift combinations comes naturally. It is, however, a potentially very disconcerting mode of operation, since many characters displayed do not correspond in any obvious way to the Braille dots pressed. The mode should only be enabled where it is explicitly preferred by the user.

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QWERTY Keyboard Conformance Mode