Bed Laptop Setup

This page is part of my Assistive Tech Gear collection.

As years pass, all the time I spend sitting has begun to catch up with me. Despite sophisticated seating technology, I experience a fair amount of leg pain. As such I decided I needed to take more breaks out of my wheelchair, which means lying in bed. But I still want to be able to use my computer when I’m lying down, so I came up with a way to use my laptop.

What’s happening here is that I’m lying down with the head of the bed slightly elevated. My laptop is precariously positioned on a bookstand on a hospital table, pointing down.

You can’t tell from the picture but I have a mousepad on my chest and I’m using a small wireless mouse. For typing, I either use the macOS Accessibility Keyboard (an onscreen keyboard) or Talon, which allows me to use speech recognition.

This setup makes it possible for me to work from bed when needed, or be able to Netflix¹ and chill.