User Spotlight: A Software Engineer’s Experience. Kenzie’s Story.

For most of my life, I thought assistive technology was necessary but not for me. That changed two weeks ago when I had an accident that temporarily left me without the use of my left hand and with only partial use of my right hand. I’m fortunate that the injuries weren’t worse, but the prospect of being unable to work scared me. I feared losing pay and important momentum in my career.

As a software engineer, my hands are essential for my job. After the accident, I initially tried using just my right hand to type and navigate, but the strain was exhausting, limiting me to only 45 minutes of work at a time. I felt unproductive and frustrated, especially with my team facing a tight deadline. While taking medical leave was a valid option, I craved the routine and mental stimulation that work provides. That’s when I started using Cephable, the software I previously thought “wasn’t for me,” and it changed everything.

“That’s when I started using Cephable, the software I previously thought “wasn’t for me,” and it changed everything.”

With the help of dictation and voice controls, I hardly need to use my keyboard, allowing my left hand to rest while my right hand uses a mouse. I’ve been able to work in several different programs such as Slack, VS Code, Figma, Jira, and Chrome. Within a few days, I became accustomed to these controls and reached about 80% of my pre-accident productivity, getting closer to 100% each day I use it.

I set up voice controls for my most commonly used phrases, frequent keyboard shortcuts like copy and paste, and navigation shortcuts on my Mac. When writing code, I use dictation and GitHub Copilot to quickly build components without using my hands. Communication with coworkers has been seamless, and adding new commands is easy. In fact, I wrote this entire article using dictation. I plan to continue using Cephable even after regaining full mobility in my hands because it’s more efficient and fun to say “run it!” than to type npm run dev 20 times a day.

Cephable made a significant difference for me after my injury, not only allowing me to continue working but also providing a way back to normalcy when I needed it most.