on-screen scanning keyboard

[David Norwood <dnorwood2 yahoo com>]

I have had ALS for over 17 years and completely paralyzed below the 
neck.  I have been using an on-screen scanning keyboard program called 
Skeleton Key for ten years now.  Skeleton Key was written by a brilliant 
person with ALS (PALS) named Dov Wisebrod, but I'm afraid he has 
succumbed to this awful disease.  You can read more about my computer 
setup here:

http://techpals.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/thoughts-on-adaptive-computer-access-for-pals/

There are a couple bugs with Skeleton Key running under windows 7, so I 
would like to try running Ubuntu on my laptop.  I used to be a Unix 
sysadmin on Sun systems, and I have Ubuntu running on a headless server 
and on my old laptop.   I use Putty and UltraVNC to login to and control 
these machines.  I tried to run GOK on the old laptop about a year ago.  
It crashed a lot and was missing many of the features I have come to 
rely on.  Since then, I have waited for single switch scanning to be 
added to Caribou, but I don't think it has.

Is it okay for me to ask questions here?  For example, on my old laptop, 
the tab key can't be used to cycle through the buttons in dialog boxes 
and the arrow keys don't work in menus.   I don't have this problem on 
my headless server.  Is there a setting for this?

Also, I have never met another Linux geek with ALS.  I would love to 
correspond with any that are out there.  I have many ideas for projects 
that use open source software and hardware to improve the lives of those 
with severe physical disability.

David