Ergonomic Keyboard to Reduce Injury

The DataHand Ergonomic Keyboard is designed to help users reduce health problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries resulting from traditional keyboards. According to the developer, the keyboard's design features enable low operating forces, greatly reduced finger travel, and improved ergonomic hand support when compared with any other available keyboard and mouse alternatives.

The keyboard offers a total of 132 keys and essentially simulates two hands, with an elevated area for the user's palm, four depressions for the fingers and a trough for the thumb. Each finger can operate five switches clustered around the tips of each of the fingers and the thumbs can toggle switches in all directions. With four modes, shifted by the thumbs, hand movement is no longer required to perform keyboard work. The developer states that they keyboards hand support results in the elimination of the major source of musculoskeletal stress in hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, backs, and necks.

The keyboard features a built-in, programmable, vernier mouse requiring no stressful hand movement and offers plug-compatibility with any detachable PC keyboard and mouse. To limit training time, the keyboard layout matches the directions fingers move on a normal keyboard.

DataHand Systems, Inc., 3032 North 33rd Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85017-5247. Tel: 800-875-7171 or 602-233-6000. Fax: 602-233-3434.