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How Effective are Ergonomic Keyboards?
Posted by
timothy
on Mon May 27, 2002 01:24 PM
from the don't-forget-your-chair dept.
from the don't-forget-your-chair dept.
Jodrell writes: "This article on the BBC's website has a brief review of the current state of keyboard technology, but also questions the validity of claims that ergonomic keyboards can help prevent RSI, CTS and other "upper limb disorders." The article suggests that maybe it's working habits that cause these problems, and not the design of computer interfaces. What are Slashdot readers' experiences?"
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How Effective are Ergonomic Keyboards?
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All about positioning (Score:4, Interesting)
C//
I suffered from RSI... (Score:5, Informative)
For all you cubicle dwellers like me out there, another tip is to move your computer to the corner of the l-shaped desk, if you have that opportunity. By using the corner, you can rest both your elbos on the desk.
Re:I suffered from RSI... (Score:5, Informative)
Get yourself a big flat, L-shaped desk (position yourself in the corner as NanoGator says), push your keyboard out to arms length, recline your chair, lean back , and pull yourself up to your stomach. Make sure your elbows stay on the table, your wrists are straight and you'll have no problems.
Since most of my job involves command line stuff, I mostly interact with the computer via keyboard. I touch type and have never had a problem with repetative stress injuries.
I have both a MS Natural Keyboard and a regular IBM clicky type and I like them both. I think I can type a little bit faster on the natural keyboard, though.
Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
In that respect, I don't think it's any different than all the Prozac prescriptions that are given every year. What percentage is completely unnecessary?
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, when I needed help in the mid-nineties, the best doctors to treat RSI in Boston worked exclusively with musicians. (The one time in my tech career that playing an instrument turned out to be a critical advantage.
It's very easy to blow off RSI as something that happens to [insert favorite character flaw here] people until, of course, your hands go out on *you*. Finding a keyboard that adjusted to my needs helped me, but only as a part of larger reworking of my technique and positioning - YMMV.
BTW - I use a Goldtouch keyboard, you can see it and a bunch of other weird keyboards at:
http://www.tifaq.com/
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
And I knew a guitar player in highschool who had serious CTS problems. He was probably the best jazz guitarist I ever met. So you probably just haven't met the right people. Also, you've probably been lucky enough never to have the combination of massive volume of playing and wrong posture that leads to such things. But as someone who experienced some and then averted significant wrist problems, I think you are completely wrong to say that it doesn't exist.
Keyboard vs. Work Habits (Score:3, Interesting)
i've been a programmer/graphics designer for about a decade now, and i have cts in both wrists (worse in the right from mouse work...), and I can tell you why right now: I don't know how to type properly.
Oh sure, i can bang away at 100 wpm, with very few typos, but my wrists are pressed flat against the table, which is just bad bad bad. Switching to an ergo keyboard helped, but not much.
The only thing that's helping me now is that i wear wrist supports on both arms that force my hands into the proper position. I've been wearing them for over a year now, and i rarely feel pain anymore. If i take them off for a few hours, then it starts to kick back in again. Something tells me i'll have to continue wearing them for a long time, at least until i train myself to type with proper wrist positioning.
Blame typing teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see a study of people who type using the "touch typing method" v.s. people who use the "hunt and peck" method. I think you will find that people who vary how they type have a much lower chance of having repetative stress problems than people who follow the rote dictates of how "you are supposed to type".
Hunt and Peck (Score:4, Informative)
"Touch typists" who don't look at the keyboard, but look straight ahead at their monitors can, through proper placement of their monitors, maintain good posture throughout the work day.
I am not an ergonomics expert, but there's nothing inherently wrong with touch-typing either. More that the way keyboard are normally positioned force your wrist into a prone position.
BTW. there are exercises [orthohelp.com] you can do to help prevent carpal-tunnel from keyboarding.
Relative Safety (Score:3, Insightful)
The bottom line is that as long as we have to twiddle our fingers for data entry, RSIs continue will be a problem. It's just a question of improving posture to minimize injury.
A few are good, most aren't.... (Score:5, Informative)
The whole deal with ergonomic keyboards is that to be effective they need to eliminate wrist possitions which cause your tendons to drag along the edges of your wrist, which causes inflamation. The key to this seems to be maintaining a natural "relaxed" wrist position which allows the tendons to do their work right in the middle of the wrist.
Of course people vary quite a bit, so it seems that what works for some doesn't work for everyone. I've found that I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of injury (don't ask me why, I just am...) so the Kinesis is the only thing that works for me. I've met plenty of folks who don't need something this extreme because the more "normal" ergo keyboards change their possition enough that they stop having problems - generally the Kinesis will also work for them, but is over kill. Those more "normal" ergo keyboards don't do crap for me.
I've also met plenty of people who just don't seem to have a problem with this stuff. I don't know what it is, but some people seem susceptible and others can spend fifty years typing on a standard keyboard and never have a problem. Go figure.
I'm tempted to say that the "normal" ergo keyboards are a scam, because they don't work for me, but they seem to help enough borderline folks that I just keep my mouth shut instead. If you're having real wrist issues though don't write off all ergo keyboards until you check out the Kinesis ones. They provide a much more robust solution to bad positioning than any of the others, many of which focus on how "turned in" your hands are while ignoring the degree of flex in your wrists.
And of course, the position of the rest of your body matters too.
I'm unwilling to say that ergo keyboards are a waste or a scam for the simple reason that without them I couldn't code anymore. I did that for a while before I found the Kinesis, and it was bad. My life as a waiter is not a pretty thing
Re:A few are good, most aren't.... (Score:5, Informative)
My 1st hand experience - doctors, not keyboards (Score:5, Informative)
I knew exactly what was happening to me, but at the time I was trying to start a business and didn't have health insurance. Becoming panicked, I goaded my partners into starting the search for insurnace we could afford - amid the spiraling costs and free-fall benefits currently available, this took 5 months. Toward the end, I was unable to work.
I read every single piece of literature on the internet about RSI, and then I moved on to the library and the medical books. This condition has happened in my family, and I immediately knew how much trouble I was in. Everything said the same thing: "see a specialist now - don't wait!" But I couldn't! And I inevitably ended up looking at the major "RSI keyboards" - i.e. Twiddler and Datahand. I "evaluated" the Datahand [datahand.com] (this is a $1,000+ investment, but still less than the consultation fee of a good specialist) for several months.
The principle seemed sound to me - the literature they had appeared convincing and the salesman I spoke to claimed to be an RSI sufferer himself who had been helped "dramatically" by the keyboard. It got a lot of comments sitting on my desk - the thing looks quite sci-fi. However, the learning curve was steep (at least for me) - it took weeks of constant effort in order to get to a third of my current 90wpm. Convinced I might be saving my wrists, I let this massive and unbearable disruption to my work continue unabated, but I found that I still felt pain, and at the end of the day, I still felt numb. In hopeful moments, I thought perhaps it would pass as I gained proficiency with the keyboard.
Eventually I more or less stopped working altogether, using interns and co-workers to type for me. My partners started to get nervous - far from sticking with their friend, I knew they were starting to wonder how they could get rid of this medical disaster in their midst. I started to contemplate what the rest of my life would be like without the ability to type or perform other similarly intricate motions with my hands.
Finally, the insurance came through, and I canvased New York, looking for the best specialst I could find. In an oak-paneled office a few blocks from Lincoln Center, I mingled with young musical prodigies and their handlers, and I was given two cortisone injections, an exercise regimen, and a piece of advice:
"Those keyboards aren't worth the plastic they're molded out of."
I went back on the regular keyboard, and within weeks, I was 100% back to normal.
So, in summary:
The Facts About Repetitive Strain Injuries (Score:4, Informative)
IBM keyboards and martial arts (Score:3, Informative)
When my right wrist starting hurting this January, I decided to change several things. First, I gave up my cheap Packard Bell keyboard in favor of one of the old, loud IBM models. This thing feels so much better. I don't know about any new, oddly-shaped keyboards, but this feels great to me. Additionally, I got a keyboard drawer to position it at a better height, which helped.
I also talked to one of my martial arts instructors (who is also a chiropractor) about exercises to help. He showed me several that have also made a big difference. In case you're wondering, it's an Indonesian art called Pentjak Silat, and the exercises involve sticks (I also take Jujitsu, which does have some wrist stretching, though Aikido would do more).
Aside from martial arts, I also play several musical instruments, and I think that the variety of motion is probably also beneficial.
PS: Yes, I do use qwerty touch typing, and have since I was around 10 (I'm almost 25 now). I think my problems may have been brought on by a period of time in which I didn't play much music, was doing less martial arts, and was writing many pages of Japanese characters. The fact that my left wrist is fine deepens this suspicion.
Keyboards, exercises (Score:4, Interesting)
I suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome and now I'm mostly over it. I believe that my recovery is due in equal parts to rotating among three keyboards so that my wrists aren't always in the same position, good typing habits, and practicing the exercises recommended by the America Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons to prevent injury.
The AAOS page with infos on this is located at:
http://www.aaos.org/wordhtml/press/exerci.htm [aaos.org] [aaos.org]
Cheers!
EErgonomics: Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't followed this field closely, but from what I've seen, the science hasn't seemed to advance since then, mostly because companies are spending big dollars to prevent studies from going forward, and the Republicans want to keep the government off our backs by preventing any regulation or much research into ergonomics. (In my paper, I noted that legal tort-liability rules were shifting so that manufacturers -- who would almost certainly have been held liable if their appeals reached the courts in the early or mid 80's -- would probably win their appeals in the 90's, which is mostly what happened.)
My own opinion is that the number one ergonomic problem today is the desk. Despite study after study showing that worker injuries are reduced if desks are adjustable, nobody (including me) wants to spend a thousand bucks more for an "ergonomic" desk that allows for adjustment of the surface and especially the keyboard level. (Instead, we spend much more on lost work time and on chiropractors, etc.)
Adjusting the chair (though important) is not enough since lowering the chair means awkwardly repositioning the legs, and the torso follows into a poor position.
Of course, one problem is that nobody offers an ergonomic desk at a reasonable price. Are there patents or something preventing someone from selling a $500 adjustable-height desk? Instead, whenever I've shopped, prices start somewhere north of $1,000, for the flimsiest adjustable desks, and $2,000 for anything decent.Another ergonomic problem that I've quickly solved was the mouse. After many months of shoulder and elbow pain, I switched from a mouse to a trackball (I think it was in 1992 or 1993), and the pain simply vanished. Sometimes I do get wrist and finger pain, but that fades if I remember to switch regularly between two slightly different style trackballs. (But please don't use a lousy trackball, stick to the Logitech red-ball trackballs.)
Finally, things like posture and work breaks are absolutely essential. Any employer who allows employees to sit hunched over a keyboard for hours without a break, probably deserves to pay immense sums for insurance (workers' comp and health). It is not an employee's right (even a self-righteous coder) to sit hunched over the keyboard for hours. Breaks MUST be taken, in which the employee at least stands up and raises her arms!
Finally, let me recall my favorite case in researching ergonomic liability lawsuits. One of the phone companies (I think it was US West) had instructed its consultants/contractors to design a 411/directory/information-service terminal that did NOT display characters as they were typed, because their research showed that employees slowed down their typing speed if they waited to see if the correct character was displayed. Of course, once the employees couldn't see what they were typing, their natural tendency was to pound the keys harder to be sure the character was being recorded (since there was no feedback about what level of keystroke pressure was enough). The result was a 100% injury rate (RSI/carpal tunnel).
Ergonomics is simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Start with the ergo guidelines, and adjust them until you're comfortable. When you get out of your chair at the end of the day, your hands shouldn't hurt, your back and neck shouldn't hurt...nothing should feel stiff or pained. I use a Kinesis Essential keyboard, type dvorak, and have my monitor raised much higher than is recommended, and at the end of the day, I feel great.
And for those of you that are putting in 16 hours a day, non-stop, for months at a time: STOP. At the very least, try and get out for a couple half hour walks a day. Doing something that keeps you loose and somewhat fit will make you feel better, even when you're sitting at your desk.
If you really hurt, stop what you're doing, go see a doctor. Listen to your body. It's no different from actual exercise. If it hurts, you're doing it wrong.