Slashdot Mirror
Input Solutions for Repetitive Stress Victims?
simiproject asks: "I provide IT consulting for a 30-person organization. Recently, I have been trying to find an acceptable keyboard/mouse solution for a staff member who experiences sharp pains in her thumb, hand and arm when using her mouse. She had been using one of those 3M joystick mice and felt it only made her situation worse since it required even more extension of her thumb. Holding a pen or stylus won't work since that requires gripping. I switched her to a trackball mouse and that helped a little but not much. However, trying to find a solution that doesn't require using the thumb is like shopping in a bizarro world where we just didn't evolve with that opposing digit. I'd be interested in what practical input solutions Slashdot has for a computer user with limited hand mobility. Voice recognition? Laptop-like touch pads (I've looked but haven't found any)?"
They might ask you the URL, mighten they? http://www.footmouse.com/
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Switch mousing hands, worked like a charm for me. While I'll never be as fast or accurate now that I'm a lefty, it's more than adequate for typical office software. I did have to give up the FPSes though.
She could go for the reflective dot on the forhead and webcam tracking software, but this was too geeky even for me. Check her Star Trek quotient before impelmenting.
How did you not manage to find any laptop-like touch pads? Did it occur to you to go to this awesome new site, type in "touch pads", and click "I'm feeling lucky"? You would have gotten here.
I've had this sig for three days.
adesso
Just the first two found from a googling. Trackpad or touchscreen would seem the obvious solutions to me.cirque
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Logitech makes a sort of trackball they call a "marble mouse". Perhaps it's the kind you've already tried, but I thought it was worth a mention. You can see some info from their site. The bottom line it that it's a trackball that you operate with your index (and/or middle) finger rather than your thumb (as is traditional). I still use my thumb to click buttons, but it's a lot less work. If that's an issue, you can probably configure the computer to reverse left and right clicks, which would make the action even less frequent. I found it a bit akward to use at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Seriously. He should try putting the mouse on the floor and moving it around with his foot. Manipulating mouse buttons doesn't really require a lot of manual dexterity.
On the whole, though, this is a very tricky issue. A friend of mine has really bad repeat stress injury and there's no easy way to "fix" it. The way to get better is to cease doing the activity that messed you up to begin with. In this modern world it seems a little inconceivable that you'd go without using a computer -- perhaps for years -- but that might be what it takes. Lousy, but would he rather stay injured the rest of hia life?
Breakfast served all day!
Simple question - Is she holding the mouse properly? (Don't take this as a condesending question - no one ever teaches people how to hold/use a mouse and ergonomics is very important - humans just aren't naturally designed to sit in chairs all day long). Pain such as this can often be caused by having the arm at the wrong angle causing the wrist to be twisted at an odd angle for long hours.
Instead of just looking at the mouse, I'd suggest looking at her complete desk/chair/keyboard setup. Starting at the bottom and working your way up.
Chair
Her chair should be such that her feet comfortably touch the ground when the knees are bent at about 90 (ie. not dangling and not cramped backwards/stretched forward) and her back is straight and comfortably supported. This should then put her elbows at about level of the desk surface.
Desk
Get her to place her hands on the keyboard with her shoulders relaxed and her forearms should be able to rest along the desk surface (alot of people have their keyboard too close cramping up their shoulders and causing the elbows to stick out and wrists to be twisted... move the keyboard back towards the monitor until its at a good comfortable length). Do the same for the mouse and get her to hold it.
Mouse
Since her arm is now relaxed and stretched out, the base of the mouse should rest under the palm of the hand, with the base of the palm resting on the mousepad, so the fingers naturally stretch forward over the buttons. Alot of people hold mice incorrectly from above and then move it with their wrist. The wrist shouldn't actually move much (it wiggles a bit) but most of the movement actually coming from small movements of the elbow/shoulder (which translate to larger movements of the forearm which transfer through the base of the palm to the mouse - basically her watch should move in sync with the mouse and not sit still).
Once all this is done and correct then you can check if the mouse if comfortable or not (I had one mouse which was too tall (meant for a bigger hand or just bad design) and I noticed the effect after a week as my wrist was tilted back just a fraction too much).
In both this article and the one about standing vs. sitting at work, I see endless well-intentioned posts from people saying, "this is how you fix your problem." Almost always, it means (and often actually says) "this is how I fixed my problem, so you should do it to."
Bottom line here folks is that what works for you might not work for me. Your ideal mouse isn't mine. Your wrist problems might in fact be caused by the same thing as my back problems and buddy's thumb problems, with the only difference being in how we've adapted to a flawed situation. Alternatively, what caused your thumb problem (and hence what fixed it) might not be even remotely related to what caused my nearly-identical thumb problem, and so the same fix might not work.
The best advice you can get is to start with a standard configuration, identify the problem, and then explore as many potential fixes until you find the one that works. This is not an exact science! There are no single, deterministic solutions to each problem!
So in short, consider every solution offered with a grain of salt--but do consider it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
She needs to see an orthopedic surgeon NOW!!!!!!
I have the same problem: changing hands is initially awkward, but it helps.
Check her posture ... any reaching forward aggravates the tendons. Ergonomics must be perfect.
A keyboard with integrated touchpad would allow her to use fingertips instead of thumb ... might help.
She needs to REST NOW or this can turn into a permenent problem! And a wrist splint that immobilizes the thumb (the low-cost equivalent is to tape the thumb to the hand). Wearing wrist braces as much as possible
Taking painkillers is counterproductive unless you take painkillers AND rest ... painkillers without rest allows you to continue damaging the tendons and by the time the damage is so great the painkillers don't work, the tendons might be beyond recovery.