Confessions of a Left-Handed Technology User

harrymcc writes "Over at TIME.com, I wrote about my trials and tribulations as a left-handed person who uses technology products. An awful lot of them have clearly been designed with the right-handed majority in mind, even when they claimed they weren't. But the good news is that modern smartphones and tablets are very lefty-friendly compared to the devices that preceded them."

Comments

Silly

[andy16666]

As a life long lefty, I can honestly say I've never felt the need to complain because a piece of technology isn't designed for me. I don't find any technology gadget I own to be designed in such a way so as to impede my usage of it.

I do know lefties who complain constantly about the injustice afforded them, but to be honest I've never been able to empathize with them.

Re:Silly

[John Napkintosh]

You should suggest that they get together and open a store filled with products which cater to the left-handed people to address this persecution. Some sort of emporium of left-handedness. A leftorium, if you will.

Re:Silly

[realityimpaired]

Well, what's your definition of left-handed? We should start by discussing this. For most people it's "people who WRITE with the left hand" even if you do everything else with the right one.

Depends... I'm left-dominant, but I write with my right hand. According to my parents, I used my left until I reached grade school, and then switched to the right in order to fit in, because nobody else was using their left and I was being teased. Sports, however, I play left in hockey, soccer, baseball, and golf, and when I train in Jiu Jitsu, I practice both sides equally. I *can* write with my left hand in English (my native language) or French (which I learned to write concurrently with English), but it looks like it was written by a 6-year old. Interestingly, with alphabets I learned later in life, like Japanese, I can use either hand, and usually pick which hand I'm going to write with based on whether I'm writing right-to-left, or left-to-right in order to avoid smudging the ink.

Does that make me ambidextrous, left-handed, or right-handed?

(and technology-wise, I don't really care... I have a right-handed trackball mouse right now, so my workstation is set up in a right-handed configuration, but my uncle has his set up left-handed, and I can use it without needing to think much).

Re:First World Problem Here

[mr1911]

You should really lock your PC when you walk away. Someone just trolled you and made you look like a complete jackass.

Re:First World Problem Here

[somersault]

I'm left handed, but I've never had an issue using mice or trackpads right handed. After a little test right now it seems I also use my right hand more often when using a tablet or smartphone - probably because of the mouse thing.

Random facts that perhaps nobody cares about: I play baseball, golf and hockey with a right handed orientation, but racket games like tennis and badminton left handed. I am more comfortable brushing my teeth and shaving with my left hand, but have recently been occasionally practice with my right just for fun. When I was a kid, I broke my left wrist and so was forced to learn to write, eat etc, with my right hand for a while. It's fun to practice being ambidextrous.

CD Jewel cases

[ehud42]

Other than smudging the ink from those awful erasable pens, I never payed much attention to products working or not working for us lefties, until CD's came along. Actually, it wasn't until I watched my right handed friend struggle to open a CD case. Somehow he was awkwardly trying to pry the front open with his right hand, which between the case swinging open against the natural movement of the right arm, and somehow gripping the edges of the lid with his left hand as he held the back, was quite entertaining.

For me it was natural to hold the back with my right hand (hinge side on my middle fingers, other side on my thumb) and then grab the front with my left hand (fingers/thumb along top and bottom). The case just opened beautifully.

It is the only tech device I can think of that worked better for us lefties from day one.

Re:I'm a lefty

[John Napkintosh]

As a lefty, I always thought it was a good thing that the mouse is on the right. Mousing isn't something that requires incredible accuracy, and the accuracy it does require is easily learned in a rather small amount of time, so long as my hand was compatible with the ergonomics of the mouse, I was in good shape. And it freed up my left hand for combination keystrokes and shortcuts and one-handed typing, which definitely requires more deliberate movements and precision than right-handed mousing does for a lefty.

Re:First World Problem Here

[Quirkz]

I will acknowledge your obscure facts and respond with my own. I'm a righty, but I deal cards left handed because I was taught by my mother, who is a lefty. You might say that makes sense, except she deals like a righty, and when I learned I properly mirror-imaged her teaching like I did with everything else she showed me. I guess we just both share a family proclivity for dealing cards backwards.

I also learned to mouse lefty when I started suffering carpal tunnel effects. I have gotten some very weird reactions from people trying to use my desk, including an absurd number of "oh! I didn't know you were left handed!" comments from people who have no reason to know or care what my primary hand is, but suddenly seemed to think it was a big deal. I've had a couple of other visitors actually move the mouse over to the right side of the keyboard, despite the fact they were standing and only needed to use the mouse for a few seconds (easily could have just used the mouse where it was) and one person who went so far as to comment as he moved it "you've got the mouse on the wrong side" like I didn't know where I'd left it.