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Fearful of lawsuits or just concerned about the health of their workers, a few employers are beginning to take action. They are providing fully adjustable, ergonomic chairs and wrist supports to employees who complain of pain. Others are trying to break up the daily routine by giving people different tasks. The Los Angeles Times has set up its own repetitive stress injury room, stocked with a set of light weights for strengthening hands, a freezer full of ice packs to calm inflamed tendons and a floor mat for ailing workers to stretch out on. The paper has customized its software program to flash "Take a Break" reminders. IBM has given ergonomic furniture to many of its most pressured keyboard workers, including 800-number operators.
New, more benign technology would help. In the U.S. and elsewhere designers are scrambling to create radically different keyboards that will be easier on the hands. But the ultimate goal is to do away with the keyboard. Reuters has given McCool a voice-activated computer that can type words and perform other functions in response to his verbal commands. Such machines are still slow and unreliable and can "understand" only a limited vocabulary, but the technology is improving rapidly. When voice-activated computers spread through the workplace, probably sometime early in the next century, the only occupational risk might be an occasional bout of laryngitis.