Software for lefties and OneNote

As my close friends will know I am left-handed and I am always pointing out people who are left-handed (John Stewart, Bill Clinton and Link‽). My friend Justin just sent me an article about how on the new Nintendo Wii it appears that Link changed from being left-handed to right-handed, here is the article: Miyamoto talks Zelda -- Link a lefty no more. That got me thinking about the Wiil and software in general for left-handed people. As many people know in the United States there is a law that says that all software sold to the US Government has to be accessible. Here on the OneNote team and Microsoft in general we work hard to make our software accessible, that is one thing I never learned in university that was a big change when I came to Microsoft.

I wonder how well the Wii will be for lefties? Will there be a way to switch hands, can the side controller piece work if you are using it with your right hand and your left hand is holding the main controller. I just would like to see what the experience for lefties is and if the console works well for lefties.

This leads me my first experience using OneNote on a Tablet, when using a regular computer I use it just like everyone else all of my scrollbars on the right and I hold the mouse in my right hand so I am just like the 'normal' user. When I switched my computer into Tablet mode I was holding the pen in my left hand and holding the computer in my right hand. I hated that when I tried to scroll down with the pen that I was always covering up the content of the page. Think about it with my left hand, I would reach across the screen to the scrollbar on the right to move up or down, the same thing would happen when I tried to change pages with the pen. I was upset but then I saw this setting in Tools -->Options:

<can't upload pictures right now, sorry>

See in OneNote you have the ability to switch where the page tabs and vertical scroll bar appears, either on the right (by default) or on the left. This is such a great feature for left-handed people. To be honest this was the first time I have seen any software that allows you to do this.

My next steps would be: If OneNote could get information from the Tablet about which mode the Tablet was in (typing mode or writing mode) that it would autoswitch the scroll bars and settings as you wish.

Anyone know of other software out there for left-handed people? I would love to hear about it!

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 27, 2006
  It's easy, man...
  
  Right-handed users use LTR (left-to-right) software, left-handed users use RTL software.
  
  Go learn Arabic... ;)
• Anonymous
  September 28, 2006
  The two staple programs on my Tablet PC are OneNote and MindManager.  Both are great programs and both offer a left-handed interface mode.  Any decent program designed for tablets has to do the same in my opinion.
  
  
• Anonymous
  March 18, 2007
  I'd love to see Microsoft get on the ball and offer left-handed scroll bars at the Operating System level. If nothing else, if we could get it in IE and Office that would be a great start

• Bill Another left-handed Tablet user.