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Keyboards for the Endangered Idu Mishmi Language

We present mobile and desktop keyboards for Idu Mishmi, an endangered Trans-Himalayan language spoken by approximately 11,000 people in Arunachal Pradesh, India. A Latin-based orthography, the Idu Azobra, was developed in 2018, but no digital input tools existed to use it. The orthography requires characters absent from standard keyboards, including schwa (ə), retracted vowels (ə̱, o̱, u̱), nasalized vowels, and accented forms, several of which involve multi-codepoint Unicode sequences that default keyboards do not support. Developed with the Idu Mishmi community, the keyboards comprise: (1) an Android mobile keyboard, published on the Google Play Store, and (2) a Windows desktop keyboard distributed as a single portable executable. Both tools support the complete character inventory, and operate fully offline with zero network permissions. The Android keyboard has been adopted by community leaders and teachers who currently know and actively use the Idu Azobra orthography. The Windows keyboard is currently undergoing testing with community leaders. We describe the design, implementation, and deployment as a replicable model for other endangered language communities.