• Progress

  • A solution at last, hope it lasts!

AGI no, I am sensitive to screens - pwm affects me (to varying degrees) on some screens but not on others and some screens without any pwm also affect me. Blocking my peripheral vision I find makes me less sensitive to some screens, like the Surface Go which I was very sensitive to but can use fairly comfortably with the blinkers on. But it doesn't seem to work as well on others like the Tab S7 FE. Still testing/investigating.

I think my glasses have some blue light filtering coatings, if I remember right, but I don't think blue light is a big trigger for me from tests I've done making the screen colour warmer via software or using sunglasses (which did somewhat reduce symptoms on an iPad but not so much on some other devices). I seem to have some sensitivity to the flicker in LED room lighting but I don't think it accounts for the stronger reactions I experience with device screens - I've experimented with natural light, changing my room lighting to flicker-free leds, incandescent, etc. Natural light when I'm not using a device doesn't seem to be a problem at all, and artificial room lighting on it's own doesn't cause strong reactions though it might contribute to some mild anxiety or "change of experiential state" - I've got a very sensitive body with sensitivities also to scents (eg soap/shampoo/perfume), wheat (cognitive and mood effects), pollen, mold etc (asthma) …. + + !!!

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  • AGI likes this.

      It may be a thing that the peripheral vision is better at detecting motion. I remember long ago, when I did not know anything about flicker, that I used to get very close to the screen and watch a grey backgound and detect into the very edges of the visual field what I thought it was the refresh rate (now I know it was PWM)

        Alyosha2001 Right, and some of us might have "peripheral vision sensors/receptors"(?) that are more sensitive than those in others.

          This is interesting, I am glad it works for you. It seems somewhat similar in spirit to "binasal occlusion" which is used in vision therapy:

            TBI was a big thing several years ago with football players, a couple of movies etc. surely we can get a doctor/ researcher to adopt us.

            mike I read about it here and meant to get one of those eye patches that you can stick on to glasses and give it a try but didn't get around to it.

                Deepdeep Just put a bit of paper on a pair of glasses and try it. For me it was a game changer.

                    mike Nice to hear that it worked so well for you. I'll give it a go after I've messed around with the blinker approach with some other devices to see what it works for and doesn't work for … tricky stuff this!

                      ryans Thanks … I think I'll try these out just when friends finally stop talking about my blinkin blinkers!

                        Deepdeep Hi, thanks for suggesting blinkers. I'd like to note that I tried them and they didn't help me, unfortunately. 🙁

                          Hi, sorry to hear that it didn't help you. I'm getting mixed results with them so far - they seem to help for some devices and not, or not so much, for others - it might be that I'm sensitive to different things and the blinkers help with one of them. It'll be interesting to see how others respond to blinkers too. Thanks for your feedback 🙂

                          ryans

                          https://youtu.be/nlsBYMWPpIE

                          Found this video after seeing your post and searching more about binasal occlusion. This lady had pain watching tv and the binasal occlusion glasses (just tape on the inside of the glasses) helped her.

                          Have you tried this btw?

                            3 months later

                            I think that, in some cases at least, the blinkers can help reduce symptoms (even if they don't eliminate them), and this can be helpful in increasing the time we can spend with a device or while we are trying to adapt to it.

                            With the idea that they maybe work by reducing the amount of flicker reaching our peripheral vision (which is more sensitive to flicker) I'm trying a further reduction by partly covering the lenses too. It seems to have improved the usability of the pwm-free Latitude 7390 without having to turn off font smoothing like I was doing earlier coz it helped. More testing required coz I've only tried it for a short time so far.

                            I've read before that peripheral vision is actually very important to our sight, it's what helps us appreciate distance and focus on further objects. So it could be wrong to block it in a long term fashion.

                              dev