Part Of screen dead

[crxlvr]

so it seems this may be a common problem on the droid after doing some digging. it seems on my droid with the keyboard in the right most part of the screen from the edge to about where the home icon starts is completly dead, from top of screen to bottom, so using the virtual keyboard is not gonna work since i can not access any of the characters on the right. if the keyboard is open, it is now the top edge of the screen, so i cannot pull down the notifications bar, i have to use the menu key.

anyway it seems that my digitizer is bust and i was wondering if i just took the screws out of the slider, would i be able to slide it back to access the screws on the other side or do i really need to nearly dismantle the phone 100% to take the screen off? i used multitouch visible test on the phone and my button press jumps that 1/4" of screen. is there anything else i can do to fix this without taking apart the phone?