Keyboards Designed To Save Your Wrists   

The standard flat computer keyboard may be on its way out – to the relief of newsroom fingers and wrists everywhere. Over the past few years, inventors have been introducing newly designed keypads that they say will combat Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI).

RSI, the fastest growing occupational illness in the United States, is caused by repetitive motions that damage tendons in the hands and wrists, often to the point of disability. According to one estimate, as many as one-third of the journalists in a newsroom may suffer from some form of the ailment. A group of about 400,000 RSI victims, including reporters and editors from the New York Times, Newsday and other newspapers, recently sued several companies that make standard keyboards, charging that the design caused or aggravated their RSI.

"Journalists are giving their wrists away to their profession," says David Thompson, a Stanford professor of industrial engineering. Thompson studied the efficiency and comfort of one new keyboard, the TONY!, with surgeon Robert Markison of the University of California at San Francisco and three other researchers.

"There is a certain amount of athleticism involved in [typing], yet we rarely give thought to the interface between our limbs and tools," Markison says.

According to Thompson, a 60-word-per-minute typist keying for six hours executes about 100,000 strokes – the equivalent of at least 1,500 pounds of total force through the thumbs and fingertips. In order to type that productively on a standard keyboard, typists must hunch their necks, shoulders and backs, and twist their arms, wrists and hands in unnatural and inefficient positions.

In recent years, at least a half dozen alternative keyboards have been designed and pitched to computer manufacturers. They include TONY!, MIKey and the Health Care Comfort, which have traditional layouts but adjustable, sloping keypads; and "chordic" keyboards such as Bat, AccuKey and DataHand, in which a typist slips each finger into a small hole which controls up to five keys through forward, backward, right, left and downward motions.

The advantage of the TONY! over standard keyboards rests in its adjustability, says Markison, who tested it on some of his patients. The keypad is hinged at the middle, allowing each half to fan outward and rise somewhat like a tent so the hands are positioned more comfortably. Inventor Tony Hodges, who expects his $625 product to reach stores within a few months, says he has held demonstrations at more than 80 news organizations and received orders from Reuters, the Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the San Jose Mercury News, among others.

Hodges says most executives who don't place orders have told him doing so might be seen as an admission that flat keyboards are hazardous, paving the way for expensive lawsuits from RSI sufferers in their newsrooms.

Hodges also charges that because keyboard makers and computer companies haven't been held accountable for RSI, they have little motivation to invest in new technology. A spokesperson for IBM, the nation's largest computer maker, maintains that the company is "intensely" researching alternative keyboards. But, she adds, "there's no medical proof" that flat keyboards are hazardous.