Advice for painful typing?

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jaws

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Joined
Feb 16, 2011
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40
Reason
PALS
Diagnosis
03/2011
Country
US
State
PA
City
Harrisburg
This past week or so, my right wrist has become quite painful by the end of the day (and even starting out the past day or two) from typing. I'm a web developer, and the primary income earner in our family, so it's important I continue working for as long as possible.

What I'm wondering is if there is anything I can do to prolong that? Like a wrist brace or something? And what about long-term? Does anyone have experience with Dragon Speak or similar software? Particularly if there are any other developers or programmers with this situation? I have to type a lot of curly braces {} in my work, which I figure might be difficult once I've completely lost functionality in my hands.

I sent an e-mail to the nurse, but haven't heard back yet.

Thanks,
Aaron
 
Aaron

Are you using a laptop or a desktop?

When I first started having trouble typing at my desktop I got a keyboard with a built in track pad (like a laptop) and just used it on my lap.

I tried arm supports but found them overly cumbersome.

Then I switched to an onscreen keyboard with word prediction called Wivik. It is a bit slow going but the word prediction helps.

There is a free trial at wivik.com

Currently i use Wivik with a wireless mouse operated by my foot.

Good luck
 
I use:

Inference Group: Dasher Project: Home

Try it for a few days, make sure you select an alphabet with full punctuation. Joel coded websites in it, I think you can to. Unlike dragon, there is no one ability you can lose that will make you unable to use it, it will work with you down to the point where you have just one twitch switch working. (Although I would use a scanning onscreen keyboard with a single twitch, myself.)
 
Dasher looks great; I think I'll use that, because I won't need to retrain myself after I lose my voice. I know there's retina tracking software out there too; I saw a demo by the university of Baltimore. Not sure if it's open source; I'll see if I can dabble and recruit some programming buddies... I need to work fast though; I can't type with my right hand at all anymore. (I go in Friday to get fitted for a splint; hopefully that will help.)

Aaron
 
As long as you have your voice, Dragon NaturallySpeaking works great. I have my version on loan from the ALS loan closet... so check with your local chapter.
After that, Dasher is great for speed.
Click-N-Type for corrections and oddball characters. You can design your own custom keyboard if you want. And there are already "speed" versions available for download.

You can check out gazegroup.org for some open source eye tracking material.

Brian
 
I also recommend the Dasher/Click-N-Type combination for someone who is losing the use of his/her hands. Once you get both of them trained, they are a very versatile package usable with a variety of mouse control methods. I've used them for three years, controlling them with a hand-operated trackball, then a foot-operated trackball, and now a headmouse.

If you are into giving open source programs a try, take a look at eViacam.

Enable Viacam (eViacam) - Open source webcam mouse emulator

eViacam uses facial recognition techniques to track the movement of your head through a webcam as the method for moving the mouse pointer around the screen.

If you are trying to round up programmers for an open source project, I would suggest finding a way to make Dasher into a PortableApp.

PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

Click-N-Type already comes in a PortableApps-compatible version.
 
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