On-screen keyboards

Even if your physical keyboard does not support characters with accents or other special characters, you can usually access the characters using an on-screen touch keyboard. Select your device below or scroll to view instructions:

On Chromebooks you can access special characters by changing to a language-specific keyboard or the international keyboard and using the on-screen keyboard:

Refer to the documentation to learn how to turn on the on-screen keyboard and enter accented and other special characters:

If your students are able to install Chrome extensions, they may find it easier to use one to input special characters. See below for a recommendation for a Chrome extension.

Select the Touch keyboard icon on the taskbar.

When you’re using a tablet, or PC in tablet mode, the touch keyboard will automatically open when you tap where you’d like to enter text. If the keyboard doesn’t open automatically, you may need to update your drivers.

If you're not seeing the touch keyboard button, right-click or tap and hold the taskbar and select Show touch keyboard button.

Once the keyboard is on-screen, you can press and hold on a character to show available accented / alternative versions of it:

Press the variation to enter that character.

If your students are able to install Chrome extensions, they may find it easier to use one to input special characters. See below for a recommendation for a Chrome extension.

On macOS you can press and hold a key on your keyboard to show alternative versions of that character on the screen. For example if you press and hold the A key you can get a menu like this:

See also Enter Characters with Accent Marks on Mac

On iPhone and iPad you can press and hold a character to get a menu of accented versions of that character.

If students on Windows 10 or Chromebooks are allowed to install Chrome extensions, then using a Chrome browser extension may be easier than using an on-screen touch keyboard. For example, the extension "Accents for Google Chrome" provides easy access to special characters. Click here to add to your browser! 😀
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​How to use the extension:
1. Click on the extension icon in your browser

2. Select the language you are using

3. Select the character you'd like to use and click "copy"

4. Paste the character into your text

The options above might be difficult to set up and use sometimes. A solution that works on any device or browser without installing any software or changing system settings is to include the special characters in your question for your students to copy & paste.

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