Video Transcript – Very Manly Standing Desk (Cubital Tunnel Syndrome Adaptive)

Video Transcript

[Kurt Edward Robinson]: Hello. I’m Kurt Edward Robinson. This is about my desk…and there it is. It’s mainly a standing desk. Here’s the standing height monitor, and the rarely used sitting height one. Here’s a microphone, out on a little balcony, unto which is clamped a little light, which shines on a keyboard, which hangs over a wooden platform covered with adaptive switches, The big button on the right is set up as a numeric keypad plus sign, which toggles the microphone on and off. This one is a left click button, this one an enter button, and this one is control plus sign, a common shortcut for zooming in. The little button below is control minus sign to zoom out. This one is currently a space bar, mainly for playing and pausing, and its counterpart on the right is backspace. In the middle there’s a mouse pad and a mouse with an attachment on top that allows it to be held in some additional ways. The mouse buttons are functional, but most of the time I point with the mouse and click with the big button on the side. I also have a little touchpad, but don’t use it very often. The big lever on the left works as a right arrow button, and the one on the right is left arrow. The bar up above activates the down arrow. Like most of these controls, it repeats if you hold it down, so it’s good for example for scrolling down for a long webpage. And, finally, I’ve got a couple of grip switches. Page down, page up.

Now you may be asking, “What in the name of Tam Elbrun is the point of any of that?” So I’ll say that for me the point is to avoid doing a lot of small, precise movements, movements of the sort one does a lot of with the usual input devices. I’m prone to a repetitive strain injury called cubital tunnel syndrome, and what sets it off are those kinds of movements continued for any length of time. Movements that are more strenuous, or that are bigger and involve larger muscle groups are usually not problematic and even seem to help break up tension created by whatever precise little movements have been going on. And that’s good because continuous tension reduces circulation and reduced circulation leads to nerve irritation. At least that’s my crude understanding of how these things work. So I would guess that adaptive switches could be and most likely are useful to other people with cubital tunnel syndrome and maybe to people with carpal tunnel problems or other RSIs. Needless to say, they’re useful for people with more serious mobility and motor control limitations, generally speaking that’s who they’re designed for. I would think though that people without any medical issues might also benefit from a switch or two just because using them feels good and it’s fun.

Here, for example, I’m nudging a graphic object to the right, pixel by pixel, but I’m pretending to be a cable car operator, more accurately a cable car grip person, that term having replaced “gripman” on April 12, 2010. I’ve been focusing on switches, but I should point out that my primary means of input is actually speech recognition software. So the mix that works for me is heavy use of speech recognition, considerable use of switches and mouse, and occasional use of the keyboard. And when I say it works for me, I don’t mean it works perfectly, I mean it works pretty well. It still needs work. In particular, I’ve got to get rid of that mouse.

And finally, let me emphasize that nothing here should be construed as medical advice. I’m not a doctor, not an ergonomist, not a kinesthesiologist – I’m just Kurt Edward Robinson. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.