How can I overcome constant eye strain? It’s there as soon as I look at a screen!
Constant eyestrain is simply eye-muscle fatigue.
It’s an everyday occupational health “visual repetitive stress injury” in Display Screen Equipment operators.
It’s due to “over-exposure to the near or close-up” and having to sustain “convergence and accommodation” (focus and refocus), for prolonged periods.
Once the muscles become tired, they can no longer maintain 3D binocular vision.
This then presents as blurred or worse, double vision, which is eye strain.
If this is your lived experience, you are well past the point of the eye muscles recovering in twenty seconds from viewing something more than 20 feet away to relax the muscles.
(You will have heard about the 20–20–20 exercise? Look away every twenty minutes, for 20 seconds at something 20 feet away?)
If your eyes are tired as soon as you look at a screen, you likely have Computer Vision Syndrome or Screen fatigue.
If you carry on regardless — (as in keep ploughing away working with a digital display screen, without making some changes), it will result in visual suppression in one eye or the other (Myopia), leaving the dominant eye with a clearer single image for the brain to process (know in the medical field as Asthenopia).
But you are not alone in this.
This is now a Global Pandemic in Display Screen Equipment operators, scaled by the WHO ICD-10 from discomfort to blindness if not addressed by sufficient time off-screen and being outdoors, soaking up the distant vista and some healthy daylight…
Now, regulators are doing their bit to help.
The WCAG 2.1 promotes website colour contrast validation, and the BSI ISO 30071.1 is all about user experience.
Colour Contrast Calibration significantly mitigates eyestrain and enables improved accessibility, and may also be therapeutic in terms of rehabilitating operators' 3D vision. However, that does not mean you can carry on regardless of self-harming over-exposed to the near or close-up!
I’ve embedded a few videos that explain screen fatigue and visual stress in this post, plus a link to the Display Screen Optimiser ( DSO) that helps with individualised pc colour contrast calibration.
The DSO will choose the correct coloured background for your pc for you to help mitigate further harm.
You can also read how one market researcher, who spent up to 16 hours a day working with Xcell and office software found huge relief using the DSO.
His optimal colour? Pale purple, ( see the title image)
Others have found dark purple, or even orange to be their optimal colour.
The point is — you are not a one size fits all person, and so the solutions for your digital display screen won’t be one size fits all either.
note: This post has been adapted from an answer I gave or Quora.
Nigel Dupree is the Founder of the S.M.A.R.T Foundation and creator of the Display Screen Optimiser
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