keycap usually doesn't cause problems.) Typing a period or numerals requires pressing Shift, whereas some rarer characters (ù, the semicolon) do not. This has led to drives to reform the AZERTY keyboard (chiefly by doing away with the ù, which may be typed using AltGr+è and u anyway, and/or swapping the period and semicolon), although to date this has not been successful. Industrial layouts and French standard In January 2016, the French Ministry of Culture, which is in charge of language affairs, expressed a will to offer an alternative to the AZERTY layouts traditionally proposed by the industry. The new layout would have to provide full coverage of the symbols required by French spelling (including accented capitals such as É) as well as other languages of France and European languages written with the Latin alphabet. The project, led by the French national organization for standardization AFNOR, released both this improved AZERTY and a BÉPO layout. Initially due in January 2018, the standard was released in April 2019. The layout keeps the same placement for the 26 Latin letters and 10 digits, but moves others (such as some accented letters and punctuation signs), while it adds a range of other symbols (accessible with Shift, AltGr). There is easy access to guillemets « » (French quotes), accented capital letters: À, É, Ç, as well as Œ/œ, Æ/æ, which was not possible before on basic AZERTY (Windows' AZERTY), previously alt codes were required. It allows typing words in many languages using dead keys, which are in blue on the picture, to access a variety of diacritics. A few mathematics symbols have also been added. A website for the new AZERTY layout has been created, offering information, visuals of the changes, links to drivers to install the layout and various other resources. Differences between the Belgian and French layouts of the AZERTY keyboard The Belgian AZERTY keyboard allows for the placing of accents on vowels without recourse to encoding via the Alt key + code. This is made possible by the provision of dead keys for each type of accent: ^ ¨ ´ ` (the last two being generated by a combination of and μ respectively). To recap the list of different keys from left to right and from top to bottom: First row (symbols and numbers): By combining the shift and ² keys, ³ is obtained; The symbol |, is generated by a