How to quickly show/hide Accessibility Keyboard

[Solomon Oppenheimer]

Hi all,
a friend of mine had to upgrade form her ol' i5 Mac Mini to M1.
She is disabled and depends on using a virtual on-screen keyboard.
Until now she used VirtualKeyboard 3.9.5 from http://www.corallosoftware.it/ which is 32bit and has long been discontinued even on Intel Mac since 10.15.
We tried the built-in on screen keyboard in macOS.
That would BASICALLY work, IF there was a way to show and hide the keyboard using the mouse, WITHOUT always going to the menu up in the menu-bar (VirtualKeyboard does, DID that perfectly well).

Q: is there a way to quickly/easily show and hide the on-screen keyboard ("Accessibility Keyboard") in macOS, e.g. using hot-corners?

I found "Dwell", but I don't see how/IF this can be used to show/hide the keyboard. I saw that keyboard can be hidden after X sec. but it will show up again as soon as the mouse moves. As the keyboard is not always needed, is there a way to kind of hide it and show it, w./o. using the menu? Any 3rd party App replacing ol' VirtualKeyboard?
As said, ideal would be [something] living in a hot-corner to do that...
An Apple Script in Dock would be an idea, click it to show, click again to hide, but I don't know Apple Script...
Many thanks for your help & feedback
Cheers,
Sol

 

[arw]

(Hello Perry 😉)
I am still on macOS Big Sur so perhaps there are easier ways in more recent versions of macOS. But until others comment on your question, I'll leave my two cents:

When the "on-screen keyboard" is enabled, it already activates a second layer of the "hot-corners" functionality.
It is independent of what you have set as normal "hot-corners" actions.
Meaning: If you move and keep the mouse in any of the 4 corners, a visual "timer" begins running:

After 3 seconds, the keyboard appears or respectively disappears in the chosen corner.
And it should stay visible/hidden until the hot-corner action is performed again.
This is independent of the feature "Hide panel after X seconds of inactivity."

The dwell time (3 seconds by default) can be adjusted in:
Accessibility > Keyboard > Accessibility Keyboard > Options... > Dwell
As well as other configuration parameters in the other tabs.

Edit: While I think the above is the preferred way, below I wrote an Apple Script to toggle the Accessibility Keyboard on or off.
Saved as .app it can be placed in the Dock. The keyboard re-appears at the same position where it has been before being hidden.
I'm not using English so I hope the window and tabs are correctly translated as "Accessibility" and "Accessibility Keyboard".
On slower systems it may be required to add small delays in between but even for my 2013 Mac Pro it never is.

Spoiler: Apple Script

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "Keyboard" of pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    activate
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click radio button "Accessibility Keyboard" of tab group 1 of group 1 of window "Accessibility"
    # check if virtualKeyboard is On or Off
    set virtualKeyboardOnOff to (do shell script "defaults read com.apple.universalaccess virtualKeyboardOnOff")
    if virtualKeyboardOnOff is 1 as string then
        # virtualKeyboard is "On"
        click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of group 1 of window "Accessibility"
        # Confirm prompt to disable virtualKeyboard
        click UI element "OK" of sheet 1 of window "Accessibility"
    else
        # virtualKeyboard is "Off"
        click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of group 1 of window "Accessibility"
    end if
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

 

[Solomon Oppenheimer]

The dwell time (3 seconds by default) can be adjusted in:
Accessibility > Keyboard > Accessibility Keyboard > Options... > Dwell
As well as other configuration parameters in the other tabs.

Dear arw,
many thanks for looking into my friends issue! 🙏🏻
We'd like to use the Dwell solution you proposed, but I don't seem to manage to get it working... 🙈
The corners are there, when the kb is visible and it hides after 3 sec.
But it comes back, as soon as the mouse moves, so how do we manage to keep it - either hidden or visible - until triggered by the corner? And ONLY by the corner, not by mouse-movement?

The AppleScript you kindly coded for us did not work unfortunately.
Not even ChatGPT managed to write something that works, even if it delivered 8 (eight!) different scripts, see its proposals here, none worked:

Spoiler: ChatGPT's proposals [that did not work]

ChatGPT

A conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges

chat.openai.com

Yours sincerely,
Perry The Rodent 😄

 

[arw]

It's difficult to diagnose the issue from afar.
1. Attached a video of how the accessibility keyboard should work. As you can see, the keyboard does not re-appear unless the hot-corner is triggered.

2. Which version of macOS and language are you using?
Can you create a screenshot or screen recording where it fails?

If it is too time consuming/difficult to explain, you can PM me to discuss something like a quick TeamViewer session so I can see it first hand.

 

[Solomon Oppenheimer]

1. Attached a video of how the accessibility keyboard should work. As you can see, the keyboard does not re-appear unless the hot-corner is triggered.

this is EXACTLY what we need!
Could you show us step by step how you did it?
We are on macOS 14 Sonoma (German language, same as yours )
I'll PM you tomorrow, thanks, mate! 🙏

 

[Solomon Oppenheimer]

Just to follow up: so she got her new Mac and it immediately worked with the Accessibility Keyboard, Dwell and the "Hot Corners".
When I posted here, we tried it on her old Mac and didn't succeed and were surprised that it immediately worked, just has described by @arw n the M2.
Thanks again! 🙏

 

[bluegrass527]

Sorry, is there any way you could advise me on how to do it? I do see the dwell action activate, but nothing is done. For Dwell, I have all 4 corners configured as "Show/hide home panel". Is this the right setting? I don't see dwell options for the accessibility keyboard perse.