Comment by nitins_jakta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nitins_jakta | Hacker News Reader

Apple still won't take some accessibility issues seriously, which is unfortunate given they are a leader in this space. They don't test their devices on people with binocular vision dysfunction, although I've asked them to.

There is a whole community of people on LEDStrain.org who suffer from severe eyestrain, vertigo, headaches and migraines to the point where these devices are unusable for a minority of people.

One possible cause is temporal dithering which can be seen as the dancing pixels on a slow e-ink display: https://youtu.be/0y-I3hqQgCQ. Windows also uses this technique, but Apple's causes more strain for some reason.

It would be great if apple could look into this.

Some of us are desperate and will gladly pay for help. I am at risk of losing my IT job cause of these companies. I have a binocular vision dysfunction but treatment is not working well.

Any ideas from the community as the technical root cause?

Edit: not sure why I am being downvoted. Please have some empathy!

I think it is unfair to generally state 'Apple still refuses to take accessibility issues seriously' because the one issue you care about most isn't addressed to your satisfaction.

I think you'll find that generally speaking, Apple cares a lot about accessibility.

I agree, apple has done great with things like VoiceOver.

There is other stuff they can do, like a toggle to disable temporal dithering. Or actually test their devices with people with binocular vision dysfunction.

> Some are unable to work in IT or as programmers because of it.

This point is very forced. Just don't buy the most expensive laptop on the market.

I have never had any apple devices, and yet I'm a software developer.

Can you identify a system that doesn’t cause these issues for you?

Older systems like a ThinkPad from 2013 work. Something changed around then for the display tech.

IPS vs TN?

There are many, many differences between display techs. Higher / lower contrast, brightness, ‘Refresh rate’ - where these can be controlled at higher granularity than the whole display at once these days. Colour response, blue light and it’s presence / absence.

There is also simply screen size. Large screens (‘external’ monitors) are much more commonplace. Having more screen real-estate in field of view could be a factor.

How close we sit to screens. That many people also look at phone screens for the time they aren’t looking at a ‘computer’ screen. Maybe just total screen viewing time is important.

Perhaps it’s possible to eliminate many of these factors? Go back to 2013 screen size, amount of phone screen use, TV screen size, etc.

It might be easier to just go cold turkey and stop using anything but one small 2013 era monitor with a TN screen (no mobile, no TV, no tablet etc.) and see if all is well, then start re-introducing.

I thought CCFL vs LED but maybe CCFL was dead in 2013

Reply on news.ycombinator.com