I saw an advert for this keyboard today. It is the Monster2 from Accuratus. It is aimed at young children and is designed to help them learn typing skills. As you can see from the picture above one of the way that it achieves this is by having different coloured keys for different functions. I was particularly taken with the way that even the vowels have their own colour. So they not only learn where the keys are but also teaches them something about how words are actually formed.  Now I come to think of it the reason that the vowels are highlighted is because young people today do not use vowels in most of what they write and this keyboard highlights the letters that they can ignore!

There is a version where the keys are in lower case as this is what children are used to seeing. The keys themselves are 24mm (1” in old money) so there should not be any problems hitting the wrong key.

It also comes with a two port USB hub that allows this and another keyboard to be plugged in meaning that when you want to use the PC you can use your keyboard. I have a feeling that you might decide that it is “easier” to use the Monster2 instead. There is even a detachable wrist pad to make sure that young hands do not develop any form of repetitive strain injury.

It is the same size as a normal keyboard and to get the larger keys to be able to fit Accuratus had to lose the standard number pad on the right hand side of most keyboards so there are just the number keys that are on the top row of a standard keyboard.

In the advert it says that it is designed for children, in which case I am definitely a child. I think this is a terrific product and I hope that Accuratus do extremely well with it. You can click the following link to find out more about Accuratus and their range of educational keyboards.