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USING SPEECH RECOGNITION
TO PREVENT MIDDLE SCHOOL KEYBOARD INJURIES
© Karl Barksdale, 2001
For Jenny, Miguel, and Mandy the pains of carpal tunnel syndrome came
early. (Their names have been changed to protect their privacy.) For this
trio, RSI symptoms began in their elementary typing classes. By the time
they reached a required seventh grade keyboarding class their pains were
getting worse. For Jenny, ten minutes of warm-up practice on the keyboard
would cause pain for up to three hours afterwards. One worried mother
refused to sign the course disclosure agreement for keyboarding writing
the following comment on the back of the form:
"The reason this is late is because I have refused to sign it. It
is no fault of Miguel. I am not signing away my right to hold the school
responsible if he gets carpal tunnel."
Public awareness and parental attitudes are changing when it comes to
these long-term repetitive motion nerve disorders. Miguel's mother suffers
with carpal tunnel syndrome. She has seen the early warning signs in her
son and wants him to avoid long-term problems.
She is not alone in her concern for her son's well being. There are
hereditary predispositions to these debilitating repetitive motion disorders.
Other afflicted parents have approached this Utah middle school's computer
teacher pleading, "Please don't let my child go through the pains I've
suffered."
And Utah isn't alone in this problem. Lini S. Kadaba of Knight Ridder
News Service on February 11, 2001 reported:
"In a 1999 survey, 170 sixth-graders at an Andover, Mass., middle school
complained of neck pain (35 percent), lower backaches (20 percent), sore
wrists (17 percent), sore shoulders (17 percent) and sore elbows (10 percent)."
"A survey published last fall of Harvard University undergraduates
showed that 40 percent reported symptoms of RSI."
Taking Action to Prevent Injury
Speech recognition software can help prevent repetitive motion injuries.
Thankfully, this middle school (along with many others across the country)
is already teaching speech recognition in the eighth grade. Nearly a thousand
students at the school have already learned to "voice-type" at speeds
of 110-160 words per minute with 95% or better accuracy.
At this middle school, as soon as injury problems are recognized, it's
standard procedure to remove the at-risk students from seventh grade keyboarding.
Miguel and others like him join the eighth grade speech recognition class.
These students continue their studies using a much more efficient technology.
The Urgency of the Situation
Cases of repetitive motion disorders among young people are on the rise.
A local athletic trainer with extensive physical therapy experience related
that half of his previous physical therapy cases were related to keyboarding
injuries. He stated:
"The hand was not made for this type of repetitive motion. The hand
was made for grasping, not long durational, repetitive activities such
as typing. Hands and wrists simply were not built to work in that way.
Typing overworks the fine motor muscles and connective tissues."
This therapy expert and Physical Education teacher continued:
"If students begin typing when they're eighteen or nineteen, symptoms normally
occur about ten or fifteen years later. If a child begins typing in elementary
school, many of them can expect problems in their early 20's. The more typing
they do, the greater the risk."
"There has always been a problem with this back to the typwriter
era, but it wasn't until everyone started typing on computer keyboards
that the number of injured people grew so large that it began to alarm
the public."
These claims are substantiated by others. According to the previously
cited Knight Ridder News Service article:
"Margit Bleecker, director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental
Neurology in Baltimore, puts it more strongly: "It's a time bomb waiting
to go off." She treated only adults five years ago but now sees middle
schoolers with computer-related problems."
Other contributing factors must also be considered among the young.
It's been observed that the keyboard isn't the only factor contributing
to problems. Both Jenny and Mandy play the violin. (The orchestra teacher
has become an important ally in spotting these injuries early on.) Both
Mandy and Miguel have a family history of the problem. Other students
have had wrist injuries in the past that may have contributed to their
pain when typing.
Many instructors also worry that the video game generation may be damaging
their hands by playing video games hour after hour. Many educators believe
that computer games may be contributing to the RSI problems we are now
seeing in schools.
OSHA Agrees
An estimated 25 percent of all active keyboard and mouse users will
suffer some form of repetitive stress injury during their lifetime. This
injury rate is much too high.
And, OSHA agrees!
According to an AP report (Workers To Get Job-Injury Protection, Kansas
City Star, Kalpana Srinivasan, 11/13/00), employees working at computers
(100 million Americans) were to recieve protections from job-related injuries.
About six million workplaces were covered by OSHA safety rules. Businesses
were to have have until October 2001 to comply. However, the Clinton era
rules were pulled off the table after the Bush election.
OSHA reported that 1.8 million workers have ergonomic related injuries.
Annually, over 600,000 employees miss some work as a result. Moreover,
the article states that "using a keyboard or mouse for more than four
hours a day" is a risk factor. OSHA wished to prevent 460,000 injuries
annually with its new rulings.
Rethinking Teacher Training
State Vocational Education systems are not standing back idly waiting
for this epidemic to get worse. According to Speaking Solutions Inc.,
thousands of schools across the country have embraced speech recognition
as the next computer interface. Twenty-one states have already adopted
statewide Business Education teacher retraining programs using speech
recognition technology. Over 317 teacher trainers have already been trained
in those states with another 400 scheduled to be trained by the end of
summer 2001. (Visit www.speakingsolutions.com/training.)
The training is co-sponsored by Lernout & Hauspie. Lernout & Hauspie
is the manufacturer of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and L&H Voice Xpress,
two of the leading speech recognition software programs in use by schools
today. (Visit www.dragonsys.com & www.lhsl.com.)
The Wrist Rescue and Recovery Challenge
In 1997, Speaking Solutions (www.speakingsolutions.com/injury) launched
a campaign to prevent injury by reducing typing by 50% for all keyboard
users. According to their recommendations, those experiencing stiffness,
numbness, pain, or other discomfort should discontinue typing at least
90% of the time by substituting speech recognition, handwriting recognition,
and other technologies that will reduce repetitive typing and clicking.
In 2000, Speaking Solutions issued a challenge to every Business Education
and Computer Education instructor to identify three students with early
symptoms of carpal tunnel, tendonitis, or other repetitive motion disorders
each semester. The afflicted students should then be introduced to speech
and handwriting recognition. It is felt that this action can take a huge
bite out of the carpal tunnel problem.
May is 50% Hands Free Month
Starting this May, another national challenge has been issued to make
the month of May "50% Hands Free Month." Teachers and students are being
asked to do as much computer work as they possibly can without touching
the keyboard or the mouse. Hands free computing represents a strange new
paradigm for most people, but with a little practice, 50% hands-free computer
use is easy to accomplish and very practical for tasks such as report
writing, email, or entering data into spreadsheets.
For the most at-risk, near total hands-free computing may be the only
option they have to avoid painful, long-term debilitating injuries. Learning
how to use a computer without touching the keyboard or the mouse is a
challenge, but it can be accomplished with less than three weeks of training
and practice under the guidance of a trained instructor.
Speech Recognition Products
Teachers are currently learning to teach one of three major speech recognition
products. Each of these products can produce dictation speeds of 110-160
words per minute with 95-98% accuracy with just a few hours of practice:
- L&H Dragon NaturallySpeaking (www.dragonsys.com)
- L&H Voice Xpress (www.lhsl.com)
- IBM ViaVoice (www.ibm.com/speech)
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