Sean Wrona on typing and shift use.
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1309

All Colemak users are typing much less distance than Qwerty, and therefore are less tired. Is that cheating too?

No it isn't cheating! It's readily available and you're still doing all the typing yourself. Next, please? ;)

If you're in typing tournaments you might have to be prepared to defend this view I guess. Is that a problem?

(And yes, Sean said he uses Caps Lock.)

Well, I think that really depend on what you call cheating.

For me, it isn't cheating unless I end up handicapping myself elsewhere. By default, anything that can't be easily corrected has a higher cheating quotient. That means that usually, software dependent solutions feel more like cheating than hardware solutions. For instance, caplock is less cheating than sticky keys, as it ALWAYS works the same. Deadkeys would also be less cheating, as a deadkey would be detectable to the naked eye. For instance, if you were to use , as a deadkey, even on someone else's machine, you could always use text replacement to fix any errors. Spellcheck will always pickup things like ',the '.

So, Colemak, somewhat cheating. Garbled text can be corrected. Sticky keys is pretty universal, but it is PURELY software, and you won't always bother to turn it on, so it is slightly more cheating than Colemak. Still, capitalization errors are pretty easy to fix. Using a footswitch, Japanese Thumb-shift keyboard, or text expansion shortcuts = cheating. On the other hand, cheating might be worth it. Depends on the individual.