Ask Slashdot: What's Out There For Poor Vision?

hackwrench writes: I like to read on my computer, but when I resize text to be comfortably big, web pages and browsers handle it badly, and some applications don't offer an option to enlarge. Some applications even are bigger than the screen, which Windows doesn't handle well. Lastly, applications consist of bright backgrounds which feels like staring into a headlight. Windows' built in options like magnifier are awkward. What tools are there for Windows to increase text size, make things fit inside the screen, and substitute colors that windows use?

Comments

What's Out There For Poor Vision?

[Nutria]

Optometrists. And "cheater" reading glasses.

Re:What's Out There For Poor Vision?

[mellon]

Mod parent up. I started to find my monitor blurry despite wearing strong corrective lenses when I was about 40 or 45. It's hard to say exactly when because I didn't really notice for a while. Reading glasses don't really help for this if you are nearsighted, because the monitor is too far away--you need nearsightedness correction. But the correction of your regular distance vision lenses stops working for near-distance vision when you get old enough to develop presbyopia.

There are a number of ways to address this. You can get a pair of work glasses (I have a pair) that are a weak version of your regular distance vision prescription. This will allow you to clearly focus on a screen that's 24" (or whatever) away. Measure how far your eyes are from your screen with a tape measure and bring that measurement with you when you go to the optometrist.

Bifocals are a poor solution for this problem, because you really want your whole range of vision to work, not just the bottom half. However, you can get multifocus contact lenses if you wear contacts. These are a bit different than bifocals, and take some getting used to, but apparently work very well (I haven't tried them--I'm reporting what a friend who swears by them has told me).

Another thing you can do, as others have suggested, is get a really big monitor. This doesn't work as well as you might like with every operating system. I'm having great luck with a 40" samsung 4k display and a Chromebook, because ChromeOS does a stupid but effective hack to make it work: they tell the browser the resolution is half what it is, and use bigger fonts. My experience doing the same thing with Ubuntu has been less positive.

Re:What's Out There For Poor Vision?

[djbckr]

It really just makes everything on the screen smaller.

Sorry, not quite true. My mac with Retina display shows things at the same size as a non-retina display (if I leave the system settings alone). However, the clarity of the display is nothing less than amazing and it's immediately apparent to me the difference between the two, even without my reading glasses. It does occasionally have issues with programs that don't know how to handle high DPI, but I find those issues are pretty rare, and it's still usable though sometimes it looks a bit funny.

Re:Use a larger monitor.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In the 'large monitor' vein, you can either go for one that just has enormous pixels(there are some 1366x768 and 1920x1080 panels that smear those pixels over a pretty enormous area) or, if other constraints demand it(in a laptop, say) shoot for something with a resolution that is an integer multiple of the one you actually want to use. Non-integer scaling can be done more or less tastefully; but simply doesn't have a 'correct' solution. Integer-multiple scaling is both easier and produces better results.

Also, if you can, turn the brightness down. Monitor manufacturers love setting the backlight to 'suntan'; because it makes the colors look more vibrant, the ghastly reflective screen look actually usable, and allows them to print a more impressive contrast ratio on the box without technically lying. If you have enough control over your computing environment, you ideally want a matte display, with the backlight low enough that the apparent brightness of white areas on the screen is about the same as the whitespace in a book under comfortable reading conditions. You will need a decent screen to actually do this(the cheap seats turn the brightness up because it's the only way to keep darker colors from just becoming indistinguishable; but better panels are up to it). You also want to avoid having to deal with glare from other light sources on the screen, since that will force you to punch the brightness back up.

There's keyboard shortcuts for the magnifier.

[jthill]

You can use win-plus and -minus to zoom in and out, and win-esc to end, if you didn't know that, try it.

Re:Use a larger monitor.

[tlambert]

go straight to a 32" 1080P TV as it's cheaper than a 25" monitor

A lot of televisions will only correctly negotiate EDID on the active input, and won't activate an input other than the primary, without first having a signal.

This tends to be a problem for laptops which are not persistent about negotiating EDID. This tends not to be a problem on Mac OS X, but in general, it's a problem for Windows, which is what the original poster said they had.

Toshiba or Samsung laptops, in particular, have a hard time driving some Samsung televisions, Dell HD monitors, and LG televisions. Mostly these screens tend to not be multithreaded in their electronics, meaning that they won't negotiate the EDID on an inactive (unselected) input when the computer is coming up, and those laptops, and many desktops, aren't very persistent in their attempts to renegotiate until they get an answer.

You're typically better off with a monitor than a television, if you plan to hook it up to a computer, even though there's a tendency towards higher expense compared to the televisions.