Two desktops - twice the health risk?
Published: 23 Feb 2004 12:55 GMT
So is a keyboard a safer way of interacting with the computer?
Well, one of the things we promote these days is using short keyboards. These are the keyboards without the numeric keypad section, which how often do you use anyway? The effect of those -- as most people are right handed -- is to push the mouse even further out away from the body. With a short keyboard you can get the mouse closer to the mid-line of the body so you're reducing the static load on the shoulder and you get a lot less discomfort.
How widely available are short keyboards? Is the industry doing enough to market them?
Yes, you can buy them, they're out there but they don't come as standard. When you buy a PC you have to buy quite a lot of standard, you have to buy Microsoft software -- not that I'm going to comment on that -- but we also end up with mouse and keyboard as standard even if that's not what we wanted and I think that's a shame. If you had a choice I would be advocating that most people buy short keyboards and perhaps optical mice, which are less dependent on the mouse mat being a good quality mouse mat.
One of the things we have done is provide a checklist for people of what kind of things they should be thinking about when they buy a mouse. There are basic things that need to be met -- you don't just buy a mouse because it's got fifteen different buttons on it; in fact that's probably the worst thing you could do. Also the mouse is no longer a simple bit of kit; you need training to get the best out of it. An awful lot of people don't know that if you click the right button you get a whole different set of menus coming up and that you can customise those menus to whatever you like so you can cut down on the number of keystrokes you need.
Are there any aspects of the way IT professionals work that could make them particularly susceptible to RSI?
I do meet a lot of IT specialists and one of the problems that they have in particular is that they are often using multiple screens and multiple systems. That is a real challenge because we don't have any regulations out there about multiple screen use. What regulations there are have just vee modified from single-screen use. The principles you need to apply are the same: you look at what you use most frequently and look for the risk factors. But also a lot of IT people are working in a 24/7 environment, where you have got people coming into your system when you're not there, with shift work. In that kind of situation you need a lot more flexibility; you can't just set your system up for yourself and leave it, because someone else is going to come in and change it all round.
So I think IT people need particularly good risk assessments to be made of their workplace. All this is meant to happen under a set of regulations that came out in 1992 called the Display Screen Equipment (DSE) regulations. So all offices are meant to be risk-assessed but it would be interesting to ask around your office and find out when it was risk-assessed. And that assessment should happen any time anything changes in your office, and that doesn't just mean hardware; if your software changes completely, the tasks you do and how you do them changes completely. But I would say that if you are using more than one screen at your desk then those risk assessments will have to be quite specialised.
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
169 out of 358 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
