When you’re left-handed, you do learn to live with all the subtle little reminders that the world is designed for the right-handed majority. They’re everywhere, and they’re especially pervasive when it comes to PCs and related products.
Consider the evidence:
- Things like power buttons and disk-drive eject buttons are usually on the right side, so they’re easy to reach with your right index finger.
- Laptop optical drives are usually on the right side of the case.
- Numeric keypads? Right side. Always, in the case of laptops. (Desktop PC-using lefthanders are able to rustle up keyboards with left-handed numeric keypads if they feel strongly enough about the matter.)
- The control panels on printers are often to the right of the paper trays. Exactly where you’d want them to be if you’re standing in front of a printer and are right-handed.
About the only enduring thing we left-handed PC users have had going for us is the QWERTY keyboard layout. It’s delightfully southpaw-friendly, with the majority of the most-used letters on the left side. Which helps to explain why I’ve always felt so much more comfortable typing than I have writing with a pen or a pencil — even though I don’t know how to touch type.
via Time/Techland
August 27, 2012
