Well RSI and CTS are quite closely related, and as someone who has latter I can say that touch screens are worst possible input device possible. All swiping gestures cause static strain, especially to wrists, which makes long time touch screen usage impossible. Even using touchpad gets painful fast, my laptop has to have "nipple" controller. Also all keyboards I use has to have clear actuation point so I can use as little strength as possible to type.
Game controllers are not better. Excerpt from wikipedia: "RSI is also used as an umbrella term for non-specific illnesses popularly referred to as Blackberry thumb, iPod finger, gamer's thumb"
Something I've seen from speaking with a lot of people with overuse injuries is that what activates a person's injury tends to vary a lot. I'd heard elsewhere that touchscreens were terrible and didn't try them for quite a while as a result. But for me they ended up being better for a lot of things. Additionally, game controllers are a large improvement in my case simply because I can hold it in my lap instead of extending my arms, and in my case there is only limited finger pain (more arms, elbows, wrists).
The ideal here, however: are motion sensors--like the Kinect, but better. In fact I started out working with the Kinect, but it's not precise enough imo to create a nicely ergonomic coding system. However, things like The Leap (https://www.leapmotion.com/) may be: it could take very subtle cues as inputs and track light hand motion.
> Something I've seen from speaking with a lot of people with overuse injuries is that what activates a person's injury tends to vary a lot.
In hindsight this really makes sense. Mine was most likely activated by combination of low-profile keyboard and finnish keyboard layout (almost all programming related special characters are behind right alt combinations). So it's not suprise that all reaching motions are not good.
> The ideal here, however: are motion sensors--like the Kinect, but better.
Kinect depth sensor has really low resolution (640x480, if I remember correctly) which is way too low if you want to interpret precisely small movements. I also was interested about Kinect for exactly same purpose, but those specs were too "meh". For this reason I have been waiting for Leap to be released since its announcement.
Game controllers are not better. Excerpt from wikipedia: "RSI is also used as an umbrella term for non-specific illnesses popularly referred to as Blackberry thumb, iPod finger, gamer's thumb"