Florence is an extensible scalable virtual keyboard for GNOME. You need it if you can't use a real hardware keyboard, for example because you are disabled, your keyboard is broken or because you use a tablet PC, but you must be able to use a pointing device (as a mouse, a trackball or a touchscreen); If you can't use a pointing device, there is gok, which can be used with just simple switches.

Florence stays out of your way when you don't need it: it appears on the screen only when you need it. A Timer-based auto-click functionality is available to help disabled people having difficulties to click.

Florence is primarily intended to be used with the GNOME desktop, although it can be used on any desktop environment (see the section about running Florence without GNOME).