Disability Life Hacks - Part 1: Eyes and computers

Welcome to my first Disability Life Hacks post! I want to address some of the things that no-one tells you when you're disabled; they just let you find things out for yourself. This post is going to focus on eye problems (and will also, therefore, explain why I can't promise to post every single day or even on a vaguely regular basis). Future Disability Life Hack posts will cover issues with taking part in sports, using mobility aids, and making life around the home and out and about easier.

So, Part One:
How to use a computer when your head and eyes want to give up.

This will be quite a short post becase even though it's the middle of the day and ostensibly the best time to be using a computer, I still need to write it in several stages without really looking at the screen, and that takes time...

Eye problems associated with EDS are common - 80% of the eye is made up of collagen, that magical protein that EDS-ers find so hard to produce properly. All sorts of problems can occur. The ones that most affect me (so far!) are myopia, glaucoma, iritis, dry eyes, photophobia, lens subluxation and astigmatism. These problems combine to make using a laptop or even a mobile phone quite difficult. Here are some ways round it that I've found helpful.

F.lux
The f.lux software is probably the single greatest thing I have ever downloaded onto my computer. It is designed to help people sleep better: using a computer late at night floods your brain with blue light from the screen which prevents your brain from realising that it is night time. You tell f.lux where you live, and as dusk draws on it automatically dims your screen and makes it appear more yellow.

F.lux settings

This doesn't just help you to switch your brain off at night time - it also helps me to use the computer a bit longer without the glare and the sharply contrasting colours many websites use affecting my eyes and my brain. I can turn up the 'yellowness' of the screen during the day so that if I'm struggling more than usual I can have a gentler screen to look at. Photophobia, which is quite common in EDS, can be managed if not eliminated by this software. I also have a similar version for my Android phone called 'Twilight', which works in exactly the same way and helps me to be able to look at the screen for long enough to be able to check the time without causing five minutes of blindness and pain!

Twilight settings

Special fonts
There are various fonts that have been developed for people with disabilities that make it easier for them to read large quantities of text. Many of these are intended primarily for people with dyslexia, but although I don't suffer from dyslexia I have found them really useful. A quick internet search will help you to find a few different types. You can download the software for a font (often for free) and install that into your web browser, or you can download a specific browser which automatically puts all websites into the special font. One that I used on my old phone (and iPhone) was a browser called 'OpenWeb'. The image below gives you an idea of what the fonts often look like. They make it much easier to read large amounts of text without squinting at a screen.

OpenWeb browser on an iPhone

Computer settings
Play around with your settings - make the mouse bigger and black with a white surround (shows up better on pale backgrounds, i.e. most websites and documents); sacrifice a bit of sharper resolution to make icons and text boxes bigger; adjust the colour settings and change the background of windows (e.g. My Computer/My Documents and equivalents) so that they aren't white and glaring; use reading software and reversal of colours (e.g. pale text on dark background); and search online for more ways to make your computer more visible to you. There's a very handy guide to making these changes written by the BBC here.

From the BBC website

Being sensible
That advice about taking regular breaks away from your computer, looking away and focussing on something in the distance, and generally limiting the amount of time you spend using your computer is all the more vital if you have trouble with your eyes. You can set alarms on your phone or on a website if you think you won't remember to take a break. There are some ideas of apps you can use here, but a regular alarm clock will do just as well. Have a good amount of time looking out of a window into the distance, then at each shoulder (which can only get so far away from your eyes, so force you to look at something close), then let your eyes just drift in and out of focus. Don't forget to blink properly too. The two most important things are to take plenty of breaks and to be realistic in how much time you can spend per day looking at a screen. In the course of writing this article I have taken about 20 breaks so far, and have also just about hit my limit of how much computer time I can cope with in a day - and that's OK!

I'm just resting my eyes...honest...

And, speaking of rest, that's all my eyes can deal with for now. Cheerio!