Microsoft Windows and RSI

RSI (short for Repetitive Strain Injury) is the phenomenon where seemingly small actions carried out over a long period of time can accumulate to create unbearable strain on the muscles. RSI is the greatest professional hazard of the modern computer professional.

Increasingly more professionals are falling prey to RSI. You hear of stories of people that are permanently disabled, people bed-ridden for the rest of their lives, or people who can't do anything with their hands any more. You can reduce the risk of RSI by taking appropriate precautions.

The standard precautions are to use ergonomically designed furniture, maintain proper posture while working with the computer, exercise regularly, take frequent breaks from work, and use good quality computer equipment. (See, for example, Amara's RSI page.) You can also adjust your computing habits so as to reduce the risk of RSI. In particular, you can reduce the use of mouse which is known to exacerbate RSI.

Windows family operating systems are heavily oriented to mouse-based interaction, and the mouse seems like the easiest way to interact with computers. However, the mouse puts a lot of strain on your hand and arm muscles and increases the risk of RSI. If you already suffer from RSI, you must definitely reduce the use of mouse.

Here are several solutions that I have found by researching various sources. I use all of them in my own work. I am writing this web page so that others may benefit from these methods.

• Keyboard shortcuts

  You don't have to use Windows systems through the mouse. Most of the normal activities can be done through "keyboard shortcuts," also called "hotkeys." These are key sequences that you can press to activate various operations or navigate menus and options. For instance, you can activate the menubar items by ALT+char where char is the underlined letter in the item. You can traverse the buttons and fields in a dialog box via the TAB key. O'Reily's Windows XP in a Nutshell and other related Nutshell guides have an excellent discussion of keyboard shortcuts including a detailed appendix listing the various shortcuts. For online documentation, go to http://www.microsoft.com/support and search for "keyboard shortcuts."

  The company Exmouse has developed various software and training products to help one's ability to use keyboard shortcuts.

• Sticky Keys

  If pressing CTRL and ALT keys seems to strain your fingers and tendons (which might lead to tendonitis), try the "Sticky keys" option. Go to Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Accessibility Properties -> Keyboard to set "Sticky keys".

• Mouse Keys

  Under Accessibility Properties -> Mouse, you can enable "Mouse keys." which allows you to use numeric keypad keys to simulate the mouse actions without actually using the mouse. In particular, the numeric key 5 can be used to "click" the mouse. This is by far the best way to reduce the number of your mouse clicks per hour.

• Intellipoint driver

  Intellipoint is the software that comes with Microsoft's "Intellimouse" (see below). Even if you don't have an Intellimouse, you can still install the software, which can be downloaded from
  Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Products page.
  It may or may not work with your existing mouse. But, it is worth a try. I have used it successfully with mice made by other manufacturers.

  Among the useful options in this software are:

  • Click saver: This allows you to single-click where Windows normally expects you to double-click. Again, a significant reduction in your mouse-clicks per hour.
  • Click lock: This allows you to click for a fixed period to simulate holding the mouse down (for dragging, scrolling etc.). Once the click gets locked, you can release the mouse button and release the strain on your finger.
  • Universal scrolling: This is the coolest feature of Intellipoint. Normally, to scroll text in a window, you have to hold down the scrollbar and move it. With the "Auto scroll" feature, you click your middle mouse button anywhere in the window, which anchors an invisible "rubber band" (to use a metaphor). You can then move the mouse (without pressing any mouse buttons), to draw the rubber band and the tension on the rubber band controls the scrolling. It is hard to explain, but it is rather intuitive to use. "Auto scroll" comes with Internet Explorer 4.0. Intellipoint makes it available to all applications and windows.

• Intellimouse

  Microsoft-designed "Intellimouse" is a three-button mouse where the middle button is actually a wheel. You can use the wheel to control the scrollbar and perhaps other things. You won't probably use the wheel much because "auto scroll" is more efficient, but it is there for those situations where "auto scroll" might not work.

  If you feel any kind of discomfort in your hands, it is a good idea to invest in a mouse thata is comfortable to hold and has a soft click. I bought a $60 Intellimouse which I am extremely happy with. There might be other mice on the market which might be as good or better.

• MouseTool

  MouseTool is an automatic mouse-clicking tool developed by Jeff Roush, who is a victim of RSI and developed it for his own use. He vouches that it has helped him enormously to get over the RSI pain (and so do I). MouseTool enables you to just move the mouse from one place to another and have it automatically clicked when you finsh moving it. (It takes some practice to refrain from moving it without intending to click!) MouseTool is free software, even though the author requests you to donate $20 to your favorite charity in return.

• Dictation software

  Voice recognition technology has been improving by leaps and bounds in the recent years. I haved used DragonDictate to control applications without using the mouse. In the occassions where you actually need the mouse (in web browsers, for example), you can use voice commands to simulate the mouse actions, such as "Left Click", "Right Click", "Mouse up", "Drag down" etc. DragonDictate is inexpensive (around $150), and is available from several sources: ddwin.com, A.D.A.Worklink, etc.

  The only problem is that DragonDictate has been discontinued by Dragon Systems and its support for future operating sysgtems is uncertain. It works fine under Windows 95 and 98 however.