The Tools

I just completed my first semester of graduate school. It was a lot of hard work, and it would have been, even if I had full use of my hands.
There are three major tools that made graduate school possible for me. The first tool I bought was a digital voice recorder. At the time, I was sitting around the house on medical leave, trying not to do anything with my hands for days at a time. I did a lot of thinking, and had a lot of ideas that I did not want to slip away. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t type. I didn’t have a secretary to dictate everything to.
I got the voice recorder and it was amazing. I recorded all of my thoughts, whether they were grocery lists or profound insights. The grocery lists I was able to replay at the store with out ever having to transcribe them. The other thoughts and insights, I was able to transfer directly to my computer as audio files. I would be able to listen to them sometime in the future.
The second tool I acquired was MacSpeech Dictate. Without the ability to type, I was locked out of any computer usage. MacSpeech gave me the ability to write things down, compose e-mails, research things, et cetera. This was great, but I was still using my hands for mousing, and that was not a good thing. I researched this problem, and found that there are a variety of hands-free mouse solutions. I initially hoped that I could direct everything with my voice. There are some programs that have the screen divided into a grid, and with some practice, the user can tell the cursor where to go. MacSpeech cannot do this. I was able to add some programming to MacSpeech, to allow various mouse clicks. This was extremely important, because I needed to do a lot of mouse clicking pursuing substitute teaching assignments.
The third tool I acquired was the foot mouse. After I discovered that voice recognition would not replace certain mousing activities, such as click-and-drag or navigating websites, I started looking into other forms of hands-free mousing. The most attractive initially seemed to be the head-mouse, but its thousand dollar plus price tag means that I will have to explore that option later. There is a two-pedal foot mouse that operates on a joystick type of principle. I’m interested in it, but for $400, I’m not certain it is going to be completely effective. My biggest concern was keeping my legs in that same position for extended periods of time. Anyone sitting at a desk, knows that you have to shift positions periodically to remain comfortable.
Ultimately I got a foot mouse with a mouse pad and a Click pad separately. The mouse is simply an optical mouse that you strap to your foot. Nothing fancy. The click pad is a separate device with five buttons and a scroll bar. You can right-click, left click, left double-click, zoom in, zoom out, and scroll. There is an alternate button, like a shift key, to allow programming those buttons with secondary functions. I’ve never tried using it.
Between MacSpeech and the foot mouse, I can do virtually everything computer-related without using my hands. I need to use my hands to open my laptop, press the power button, and plug in any cables, but other than that, my problems are solved. Sort of.
There are drawbacks to each of these solutions, but perhaps I will save that for another blog post. The significant point I want to make here is that these tools have allowed me the freedom to still function in a digital world and BECAUSE OF a digital world.