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Tell your computer to type, but pack throat lozenges
April 29, 1997
Web posted at: 10:32 p.m. EDT (0232 GMT)From Reporter Lisa Price
CHICAGO (CNN) -- Voice-activated computers, precise and easy to use, may alleviate some workplace injuries but may cause others.
Susan Fulton, an administrative assistant with The New York Times, used to live with traditional repetitive strain injuries, or RSI, in her wrists. Then she switched over to the voice-activated computer.
Now, the technology has become "like my servant, and helps me do my work. And I like to show other people what it can do," Fulton said.
Renee Griffith also likes the device. A one-time computer keyboard user, she developed painful RSI symptoms. Now she runs a company, Zephyr Business Services, where employees rely on voice-activated systems.
"It's allowed many of the disabled population to come back to work," Griffith said. "In fact, I've hired a great number of those folks because there's nothing wrong with their brain."
But it seems the technology often credited with helping prevent RSI in the wrists may in fact be causing RSI of another kind.
In order for the computer to recognize commands, the user must speak in a slow, controlled and nearly expressionless voice.
It's a style of delivery that can place strain on the vocal cord muscles in much the same way repetitive action at a keyboard might strain tendons or muscles in the arm or wrist.
A formal study about such complaints is still under way. In the meantime, experts say, go slow, and try the product before buying it.
"You have a sore throat and then a dry throat, and then your voice cuts out. And then you go off it, and you're OK," said Lois Singer, a speech language pathologist.
"It's an unnatural way to speak, and if you do something unnatural for an extended period of time you're going to get into a misuse/abuse problem," Singer said.
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