Re: Left handedness and stylus input (tabletPC, palm, etc)

On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> one of the simple things that the physical world often forgets to cater for
> is being left handed. Things like having the drawers and the empty space on
> the wrong side of a desk, the important parts of a keyboard on the wrong
> side, the binding rings of a notebook in the way of your writing hand and so
> on are not a problem on the order of tying to get a wheelcair up a lot of
> steps, but do cause problems nevertheless.

well besides the other disabilities I am also Left handed.

I use the Dvorak keyboard and it has a left handed version as a standard
option. 

Bob

> 
> On a computer this isn't normally much of an issue - move the mouse to the
> other side of the keyboard (no good for people with tiny laptops that have a
> built-in mouse on the right), reverse the numbering of a 3-button mouse, and
> most of the problem goes away.
> 
> But it does become an issue when using a stylus to touch the screen. Often
> controls are fixed to the right-hand side. For right-handers this is
> convenient - they don't obscure what they are working on as they operate the
> controls. Which is the exact oposite of what happens to left handers.
> 
> I presume that mouth-stick users can have similar problems, and that both
> groups are used to just dealing with the efficency loss. But I would be
> interested in learning more about where and to what extent this causes a
> problem.
> 
> (I realise that this is not the most pressing problem for many people, but it
> has been a minor one for me for a long time, and if we could identify the
> real issues and deal with them, or discover that I am unique and should fix
> it quietly myself, then we might make the world a bit more accessible, and
> even learn something useful in the process)
> 
> cheers
> 
> chaals
> 

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Received on Wednesday, 11 December 2002 10:41:08 UTC