• Awareness
  • Petition on change.org - Please sign it and bump

Hey folks,

Someone put up a petition on change.org to ask Apple for a disability option to disable causes of eye strain (temporal dithering, PWM flicker). Looks like a good start. Wanted to post it here.

https://www.change.org/p/apple-add-accessibility-options-to-reduce-eye-strain-and-support-vision-disability-sufferers

I'm not sure who started the petition. It would be nice if it included other vendors and devices (not just apple, and include phones also). Either way, this is a good start.

Please sign it and bump this thread so others see it.

    I understand the urge to want to do "something" about these issues, but first off, merely signing a petition reeks of "slacktivism" to me. I don't see how merely a bunch of people complaining about vague "issues" without anything solid to go on is going to be productive for anyone.

    As I said in another post

    What I think the issues that are closer to "solved" (e.g blue light, PWM) have in common is that they have a clear "cause and effect" relationship towards the problem and potential solutions.

      Change need to start somewhere, for example eink is not more developed duo to manufacturers would have to sell it and advertising that “old” technology are bad for our eyes and health. They will never do that, unless persons are aware of the problems. Pwm, temporal dithering or regular backligt is a long term health problem for many persons, and apple and other big companies are aware about it. Many persons are blind and have serious vision problems because big companies dont want to develop more eye friendly technology, they only think about “beautifull” screens that sell a lot, and not “healthy” screens. One day they all will be in court!!! They are aware about the problems, most of us are very naive, long term is the problem, not short term.

        eyestrainsolutions I agree that change needs to start somewhere, but I also agree with JTL that petitions like this one have a limited chance of being effective. I signed anyway, though, both to add my voice and to also make a comment to encourage people to report their health issues with screens and lights to the FDA since we’ve just figured out an avenue for doing so (Accidental Radiation Occurrence Report form 3649). I think that manufacturers are very unlikely to change on their own and sending our reports to the FDA is a first step that I think has a reasonable chance of effecting change in the long run. In my communications with the FDA, they seem eager to receive our reports- even if you’re not from the US.

        https://www.flickersense.org/How-to-report-LED-health-problems

        I signed. Spoke to an Apple rep who said the more people who voice the issue the more likely Apple is to address. It may simply come down to attention and this seems like a good way to me.

        caboy been trying to get people I know to sign!

        12 days later

        Just 118 signs? Come on guys, please sign and share, let's make it grow!!! It could be, with the blessing of God, a good starting point (I don't use Apple)!

        I think we are more than 100 users on this forum, and each has at least some friends. Theese numbers are very low!

          I did sign it and people above already made a similar point, but for a company in the magnitude of Apple to even care, or more realistically, to pretend that they care, these type of petitions need to have at least a six-figure sum of signatures and even then you have to cross your fingers. That is, even if every forum member's family member and acquaintance signed this, the petition wouldn't cross 2000 signatures.

          Maybe we should do a petition not just for Apple. Who should we address it to?

          I think something that would be far more successful is to get one or more popular influencers on YouTube to talk about it yikes!~. However, such a person wouldn't do that for free of course. You basically would have to pay them to talk about it like a run-of-the-mill sponsor does and then it would get more traction than a petition I think. A petition does more harm than good for a community of sufferers in my opinion if the numbers are so low, especially when the issues are so wide-ranging and can't be pin-pointed precisely for most people with issues as was already discussed in this thread above.

          Or what would also help, if you would plan to go the route of convincing companies to produce healthier equipment, is to convince them of making healthier screens during a period when monitor and TV sales are lower and when they realize that they need to convince the public to discard their old still functioning screens for new ones. Just like they did when they sold 3D TVs 15 years ago and now what they are doing with screens with 4K resolutions etc.

          The biggest problem is that “healthy” screens have downgrade visual quality, and manufactures would have to admit they have been placing profit first place for decades.

          Many persons are working +8h a day for decades, many are retired and blind at older age thinking its normal from age, not knowing its from the long term screens usage.

          The new generation start using screens since their birth, the long term eye healthy may be a big problem, all because manufacturers place profit first!

          I created the petition. This is not "slacktivism." Everyone individually calling Apple and other manufacturers has done nothing. Boycotting manufacturers will do nothing if everyone in the industry is using the same technologies. It just leaves us with no ability to work. Apple has been the industry standard for design work for decades. Many manufacturers imitate the design features of Apple hardware. If we can pressure Apple to acknowledge these issues, provide specs that document them, offer products which ameliorate them, we will have leverage on the rest of the industry.

          It is time to collectively pressure a major player. We are too spread out across the world to stage local protests at Apple HQ. Sign. Add comments to share your story. Share the petition on every social media platform you use. Ask people you know to sign.

          https://chng.it/L5pFw2bp

            lougro Another suggestion i have is try to find someone who can fund a documentary for youtube. Good documentaries are expensive; but many want to help.

            There are company’s with thousands of workers that don't need color screens, that are screwing their eyes, when eink technoly could already be main stream if big players wanted. Situations like this need to urgently change.

            Thanks for your initiative, only with work something will change!

            lougro

            My first noticable issues came from Mac devices about 7-8 years ago, at a time when Windows and iPhone was still okay to use, I went back to Windows and forgot about Apple PC's. Then slowly but surely I notice complaints here about Windows 10/latest iOS/Games Consoles/Smart TV's etc. So yes, I agree there seems to be this silent industry wide agreement to uniformly enable temporal dithering (or at least I think dithering, run out of any other explainations) on everything.

            As well as the other suggestions here such as influencers, getting this information out via other social platforms (creating a subreddit to potentially crosspost to other subs or to point to the wiki here), will at least help gain exposure for this forum, and if not directly help towards a direct discussion with tech companies, at least will raise awareness of these problems so others currently unaware of the cause of their symptoms can be more thoughtful about their next tech purchases.

            At least in Apple's case, it has been documented by Amulet Hotkey that AppleOS does use temporal dithering. They also created a software solution to disable it, which as has been mentioned before requires use of Amulet hardware in order for it to work. I wonder how affordable the cheapest Amulet hardware is to buy.. at least then it can be proved one way or the other if the kext works. I don't know if they have created a solution for M-series devices yet.

            6 days later

            I wanted to bump this and say thank you. It looks like we are up to 194 signatures today (Oct 12). It looks like it is picking up momentum too. Just a day or two ago we only had 175-ish.

            Thanks, everyone.

            194 signatures! Amazing! And the folks who left comments, they are excellent. Thank you to everyone who has—enthusiastically, cynically, even reluctantly—signed so far.

            5 days later

            caboy (temporal dithering, PWM flicker)

            those are not the cause of strain for everyone. Personally I have zero problem with either of them. And I suspect many people latch onto those things as a cause because it seems to make sense that it would be a cause but in actuality have nothing to do with the underlying issue

              ensete maybe not, they are not the cause for everyone. But it may be for someone and we are asking options on software level so everyone can choose those settings to match his situation. It's not that hard, to add some accessibility settings!!!

              ensete Well i have a problem setting "color gamut" to "auto" on my LG TV because it enables dithering. I didnt know about dithering at the time i was buying it, and i didnt need glasses at the time, but i couldnt enable it. That was 4 years ago, i never understood it up til a few weeks ago. Again and again i tried certain settings, always a eye pain with this setting.

              My father has similar problems like me. He told me he changed all his lightbulbs to 2700K lightbulbs, that took away all his eyepain, he can now work 8-10hours again. I looked it up, it seems he took a completely flickerfree lightbulb (by accident!!!) that emits light 100% of the time. He didnt know that, perhaps that was his problem all along. Who knows? I ordered 3 of them just for testing purposes(12 € for 3).

              I have some HUE lightbulbs. They have like a 1000hz PWM. I like them a lot, i can reduce brightness a bit and its totaly ok, but reducing them to 15% makes me feel totaly uneasy. Diming the lightbulbs is ok for me only at 50-100%. I have no idea why this is a thing, but i had to look it up, i always thought they wouldnt use PWM… I now use the lamp of the room next door, because it is set to 100% brightness and that is totally ok with me.(Same thing with my laptop using PWM…)

              A lot of people have problem with these things and dont understand it, maybe more people than the other way around.

              The thing is, if it was a disablity then the industry would be forced to produce more variants of flickerfree lightbulbs or build TVs complety without FRC, etc. Prices would then go down for these products. It would help a lot.

                dev