Using AI to Create Keyboard Layouts
Translation Commons and the University of Limerick are extending their work educating students about language digitization and in particular keyboard development. This presentation will discuss our methodology to explore using AI to generate keyboard layouts that are optimal for each language, the results of our initial project and planned next steps.
Many Indigenous languages do not yet have support on digital systems. Being able to type text via a keyboard is one of the obstacles. Some languages are written in scripts recently added to Unicode and require a completely new keyboard design. Other languages use existing scripts but the character, bigram, or trigram frequencies are such that the traditional keyboard layouts are very tiring to use and particular characters can be awkward to type. Different layouts can be needed for different devices, for example desktop, mobile, and others.
Creating new keyboard layouts or ones that are optimized for so many languages would take a massive effort if done manually, preventing many Indigenous language communities from joining the digital world with all its many benefits, including preserving their culture. Using AI to automate keyboard layouts will significantly reduce the time for digitization of Indigenous languages.