I'd be happy to talk about alpha vs. qwerty layout considerations if you're interested. We did a little research on this for the VVSG work. Two bottom lines:
People who know keyboards can navigate ALPHA layouts but prefer QWERTY
People who don't use computers or don't read well prefer ALPHA
Existing systems:
Switch order is alpha in all current systems.
One existing system has a QWERTY layout, but does switch access in ALPHA order, and confused everyone (except totally blind voters).
One has a option to switch between the two (I can't remember how this was done, but I think it was a system that required access switches to be activated [boo] so it was tied to that preference option)
Also, Denis Anson has been noodling on how to do keyboard entry a lot, so we had him talk about his ideas in the videos
Additional Notes
Providing a toggle to allowing a voter to toggle between alternate keyboards is possible and not difficult.
In user test with (sighted but no mobility) voter, they mentioned that their they would prefer: row, group, key select. However voter said that because adding a write-in would be a seldom used feature, it was acceptable to have to navigate back and forth through all keys.
The keyboard library we are currently using (simple keyboard) has an extension to allow up/down/left/right navigation to the most logical key.
Moving comment from @whitneyq on https://github.com/votingworks/bmd/issues/333 here to new issue:
Additional Notes