Showing posts with label Head mouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Head mouse. Show all posts

Friday, October 14, 2011

My Assistive Technology for my painful hands

Dragon annoys  me sometimes, so I usually end up using other "assistive technology" devices. The mouse is the worst for me. I have used two different foot mouses (feet mice?? :). The first one had two large click pedals. The pedals were close together and stiff, so it was hard to use.


Foot Mouse

Then I bought a large slipper type foot mouse, like a giant mouse for the foot, with a large mouse pad, and a separate piece for clicking the buttons. I really like this one, but it doesn't work well with  my new computer. Here is the one I like. I bought it on ebay for much cheaper than the list price:




http://www.bilila.com/foot_mouse_slipper_mouse

Head Mouse

I started using all these about 5 years ago. I've since gotten better, but want to start using them again.

 
                                                               Here is the first model I used.

That was a joke. We made a fake one to spoof my husband's boss. He almost bought it!!



In addition to the foot mouse, I use a head mouse. I have the Smartnav 3. It was expensive, so I asked for it for Christmas.


http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/products/3-at/
You can probably buy the 3 on ebay for way cheaper now.

Here is the Smartnav 4 head mouse, just to see how it's used.
The hat has a reflective strip at the front, you can also stick extra strips onto anything else, like your forehead, earlobe, etc.


Initially I used the head mouse, with a voice  software. Dragon was too slow. Then I used just the voice clicking part. It makes a giant grid with numbers then you say "click 36" to click on that area.

I will say that even with all this, it was slow and frustrating. I usually ended up using my mouse and keyboard.


Trackball Mouse

So, now that I'm better, I limit my typing and computer use to at most 2 hours per day. Best is 1 hour. I use a special mouse that has a giant ball in the middle. A friend lent it to me.




I know this is a lot of information, I just wanted to throw out the other options to make it mouse free.