Repetitive strain injury (RSI) may have vanished from the newspapers as an issue for users of computers – but it's far from disappeared in real life. Is RSI in fact set, swine flu-like, for a second and much more disruptive wave than it did in the 1980s when it first began to be talked about?
“The combination of bad posture and cramped laptop use will inevitably increase the number of people with MSDs (musculo-skeletal disorders) and RSI problems in the future,” says Paul Goddard, managing director of Southampton-based Keytools. '”How come the most common cause of people being off sick is already MSDs?”
To answer that, a short history lesson: why did we spend so much time talking about RSI in the past but so much less now?
At the time it was probably more to do with the fact that IT was being introduced into the workplace and people (and unions in particular) were a bit leery about it. How times have changed; now we can't be separated from our iPhones, BlackBerrys, laptops and home computers.
As a society we may thus in fact be storing up all kinds of trouble for ourselves as we become more and more IT-centric and spend all that time surfing and internet dating on our home keyboards, after very possibly toiling all day in front of an employer's desktop.
“Working in very small spaces like iPod screens, you can easily see how flickering fingers and gesture techniques are going to be heavily repetitive,” warns Goddard. “No doubt we will be hunching over tiny screens and straining our eyes for quite a while yet.”
What's also a factor: as even people in the RSI community of sufferers admit, the medical profession has never been very keen on the phenomenon, some elements going so far as to say it's more a psychosomatic condition than a real workplace injury.
The UK's health and safety watchdog the HSE these days prefers the much more generic term 'WULD,' for instance, or Work Related Upper Limb Disorder, a possible sign that some officialdom no longer sees RSI as the pressing issue it once did.
That's something of a worry for not just sufferers of RSI but also for experts in ergonomics and products designed to help us use computers in ways to avoid risking our health in the first place, who say that we may literally be typing and mousing ourselves into great pain and even disability without knowing it.
One way to settle all these doubts, surely, is to look to the statute book. Since the start of 1993 we've had laws to oblige employers to ensure better design and installation of computers so as to prevent RSI/WULD. Good news: no one's been prosecuted for not doing so. Bad news: no one's been prosecuted for not doing so.
'Since the DSE (Display Screen Equipment) law came into force there has not been a single prosecution under it,' says Steve Fisher, an RSI sufferer and leader of a group called RSI Action.
“That's even though 90 per cent of the people I meet with RSI got it from using computers – and in contrast to nearly 5,000 prosecutions for other breaches of the health and safety laws of the UK. That tells me that employers don't care about RSI any more as they know no-one will come knocking on their doors and there is no sanction against letting it happen.'”
You can choose to disagree. But what is certain is that if you do get in a state where you feel physically unable to work with conventional keyboards and mice, you could be literally unemployable in today's knowledge-based economy. That's not going to be a comforting thought for anyone living in a country that's having its worst recession for 100 years.
There are, though, two solutions. One, avoid getting RSI in the first place; two, there are now lots of technologies and products to help if you do start feeling you're in danger or even have to start living with the condition.
Want to avoid RSI, asks Goddard rhetorically? Change your behaviour. “It's how you work - not the machine - that is putting your health at risk. It's too easy to adopt bad posture even if you have a good chair. If you can develop the habit of checking what you are doing and then doing something to change it, you are half way there. Your body is not constructed to spend long hours sitting so do it less.”
Other proven best practice is to do things like always working with good posture, taking both small and long breaks, using keyboard shortcuts as much as possible to minimising your mouse usage and releasing muscle tension.
Still say the worst happens and you do overwork so much you have to live with RSI? First off, forget a cure: there ain't one. In the words of one of the classic guides to coping with it, It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!: RSI Theory and Therapy for Computer Professionals (Damany and Bellis, 2002), you hear the lesson that your body's changed the rules on you and these new ones are what you're going to be living with from now on.
Instead, look to things like avoiding keyboard use as much as possible with things like speech recognition [see box], which if you buy a high enough spec microphone have finally started living up to their original hype; alternative mice, like the vertical models or either-hand ones on the market now; and non-standard keyboards, all the way from the Microsoft Natural to the high-end Goldtouch ergonomic device.
Although the powers that be don't seem as interested in RSI these days, that may be a harsh judgement. In fact the HSE is backing a major conference in London next March (http://rsiaction.org.uk/rsi-awareness-day/) to bring together the latest thinking on the syndrome and get the main issues an airing..
That may be good timing. Ask around your own office, your wired-up friends and acquaintances or check your own body. Those little aches and pains in your wrist and arms you ignore? They could be the first warning sign of a very unfashionable but very real problem that could cut you out of the entire computer-using loop if you're not careful and take steps now to head any problems off at the pass.
'Unless dealt with quickly and properly, RSI can and does lead to permanent disability. It's that serious,' says Ian Litterick, founder and executive chairman of a company called iAnsyst that provides a range of assistive technology for disabled people (www.iansyst.co.uk).
RSI is dead? Long live RSI, alas.
(BOXOUT 1) Case Study –The technology saved my career'
Business and finance journalist Tim Cooper has been suffering RSI since 2003, brought on he believes by massive overwork and use of mice getting the online publications he was working for onto the Web. 'In a way, all RSI is self-inflicted if you look at it, as you're the one doing all the work,' he shrugs.
By 2006, he says, he could barely type more than an hour a day without experiencing severe pain – and as he needed to use IT to make his living, things looked very dire. Luckily Tim says that after struggling on his own and with inadequate information he revolutionised his working habits by getting his workspace totally redesigned by taking the advice of a number of ergonomics consultants and extensive use of both modern speech recognition software, high-end but he feels appropriate microphones, a specialised mouse and the Goldtouch keyboard.
But even now, he says, 'It's a daily battle and what I do is to work with the condition, not look for it to ever end.' So what is his advice to the readers of Ability who might worry about or be living with RSI? 'The technology really is finally out there and it does work. Be prepared for a steep learning curve and don't be too proud to not seek help. It's worth it; the technology pretty much saved my career.'
(blob) Tom has written his own much longer version of his experiences here:
Resources
RSI fighting keyboards, software and other products:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043
Data on RSI:
Health and Safety Executive resources on RSI:
NHS web guide to RSI:
An independent organisation's view: