Speech Can Help Corporations Meet New OSHA Safety Guidelines

OSHA/Keyboards/Mice and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Using a keyboard or mouse for more than four hours a day is a known risk factor for injury. OSHA, after 10 years of research, set guidelines to prevent CTS injuries that would have impacted every business. However, Congress and the Bush administration repealed the guidelines in March 2001 before they were to be enacted.

© Karl Barksdale

We founded Speaking Solutions in 1997 to battle the rising tide of carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injuries. An estimated 25 percent of all keyboarders will suffer some form of repetitive stress injury during their careers.

This injury rate is much too high. And, OSHA agrees!

According to an AP reported (Workers To Get Job-Injury Protection, Kansas City Star, Kalpana Srinivasan, 11/13/00), employees working at computers were among 100 million Americans that were to receive protection from job-related injuries. About six million workplaces were to be covered by OSHA safety rules. Businesses were to have until October 2001 to comply.

OSHA reported that 1.8 million workers have ergonomic related injuries. Over 600,000 employees annually miss some work as a result. Moreover, the article specifically stated that "using a keyboard or mouse for more than four hours a day" is a risk factor. OSHA hoped to prevent 460,000 injuries annually. Under the OSHA rules, employers were to examine the risks of a job and make necessary changes. The rules were killed by Congress and the Bush Administration in March of 2001 before they could be implemented.

To help take a preemptive bite out of their computer-related injuries, corporations like Chevron and Kodak are retraining employees with Continuous Speech Recognition (CSR). CSR training is far less costly than paying workman's compensation claims and medical expenses. OSHA indicated that its new rules would have cost $4.5 billion to implement but would have saved $9 billion a year by preventing injuries.

This political football between Congress and OSHA regarding keyboarding injuries has been bouncing back and forth for a decade. The Bush administration is less supportive of the new guidelines than the Clinton administration and took the steam out of the OSHA effort.

However, rather than fight the rash of keyboard injury related lawsuits, many businesses are already adopting a speech recognition retraining strategy for their employees. The bottom-line is this; employees can't get carpal tunnel syndrome from a keyboard if they're talking to their computers a good deal of the time.