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Old 02-19-2017, 03:47 AM   #8
maddz
Wizard
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Posts: 1,403
Karma: 30039536
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: UK
Device: Kobo Forma, Icarus, iPad Mini 2, Kobo Touch, Google Nexus 7
I got severe RSI some years back when I was using a standard keyboard with wrist rest and a Logitech marble mouse. I was doing a lot of copy/paste operations and the wrist rest put pressure on the nerve and the narrowness of the marble mouse made it worse. Like you, I don't touch type and can't use split or chordal keyboards. After an enforced 2 weeks off, my employers had to send me to their occupational health people. They ended up sending me to occupational therapy and on their recommendation sprang for a better operator's chair - I'd been using a contract chair.

I also tried various trackballs to replace the marble mouse because of the narrowness; I couldn't use a standard Logitech trackball because it wasn't ambidextrous, and tried the vertical trackballs as well. I ended up using one similar to my current Kensington Orbit. I also tried a wrist rest trackball.

The other problem was the standard chunky keyboard and wrist rest; they put my hands at too much of a vertical angle and pressure on the wrist. A split keyboard was not an answer because of not touch typing, although I found the horizontal angle better for me (fingertips pointing at each other not the monitor). After some research, I ended up with an ultra-slim A4 Tech natural-A keyboard and replaced the wrist rest with Fellowes forearm cradles. This set-up meant my hands and forearms were as flat as possible, supported on the desk, and my hands and fingertips pointed to each other like an inverted V and weren't parallel.

Unfortunately, when I came to replace the keyboard a couple of years ago when I had to transfer to a laptop because of changes to the VPN set-up, A4 Tech were no longer selling to the European market, let alone the UK market, and I ended up with a US layout keyboard. IT also tried me on a Microsoft curved keyboard but after one day of use I started getting RSI. Luckily, IT were able to obtain drivers for the keyboard.

Unfortunately, I've never found anything to replace the Fellowes cradles, and I believe they are no longer available.

At home, I tried Dragon with my Mac, and like you didn't find it satisfactory. Mind you, I was running a Power PC machine at the time... I couldn't use Dragon at work because the proprietory database I was working with didn't accept the voice input and I didn't do vast amounts of MS Word work; when not working in the database, I used Excel or Business Objects, Word got rarely used.

As far as possible, I replicated the office set-up at home. When I upgraded to my current iMac (about 10 years ago now), I found the standard Apple wired keyboard to be ergonomically similar to the A4 Tech so I'm happy with that. My main problem at home was getting a desk deep enough to rest my forearms on the desk to type.
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