French and English share the same 26-character alphabet, but additional accents, symbols, and punctuation make it challenging for Francophones to use keyboard layouts designed for English speakers.

For roughly a century, France has been using the alternative AZERTY keyboard layout on typewriters and computers. But it doesn’t help people type in French easily, and the country has had enough.

Keyboards touch our everyday lives yet, despite the well-known drawbacks of current layouts used across the globe, the position of characters has largely remained the same. Researchers at Aalto ...