How To Avoid Computer Eye strain

Your eyes are important; and staring at a monitor all day does them no favours. Eye strain is a symptom that manifests when you over-exert your eyes for an extended period of time. According to howtogeek.com, this can happen when you’re viewing an electronically-lit screen for a long time.

Symptoms of eye strain

• Pain and tension around the eyes and/or temples (which can spread to the head, neck and back)
• Eye dryness and/or redness
• Fatigue
• Sensitivity to light
• Headache
• Difficulty in performing visual tasks
• Blurred vision
• Double vision

Eye strain doesn’t typically lead to permanent damage of the visual system, but it’s unpleasant and can keep you from getting your work done. The causes of eye strain vary for everybody, and can change over time. The three main causes of eye strain are: an inadequate workspace setup, inefficient lighting, and lack of proper eye care.

How to avoid eye strain

Modify your work habits: Eye strain may cause you a lot of strife, through painful headaches and blurred vision. But simply modifying a few of your work habits can go a long way to alleviating eye strain.

Enlarge text: Your eyes have to strain to read small text, so keep text large to give your eyes a break. When working in text editors or viewing online materials, use the keyboard shortcut to magnify text as needed. (This is usually holding down the Ctrl or Command button on your keyboard and zooming with the mouse scroll wheel, or through a touchpad gesture.)

For those webpage text areas that tend to be too cramped-pull them over to your favourite text editor to have more space. Always magnify to a size that feels comfortable. If you have to move your head closer to the screen, squint, or don’t feel relaxed while reading, then the text is still too small (or your monitor is too far away); also make sure your screen resolution is set high.

Read offline:  Intense reading on a computer monitor isn’t ideal for productivity because eventually, your eyes will tire out. When you come across a long article or document, print it out (in large-enough print of course). Then read it at your own pace and in the right lighting.

If you’d rather not use a printer and you happen to have an e-reader, with a screen that’s closer to paper text and doesn’t need a backlight, you can use a service like Send to Kindle to move it over to the other device. Note that reading text on a mobile LCD, like a phone or a conventional tablet, isn’t really any better than a computer monitor.

Work in spurts: Your computer is set up for virtually nonstop work, but you aren’t a machine. You need to take breaks to recharge, and so do your eyes. The 20-20-20 rule is easy to remember: take a 20-second break every 20 minutes, and look at something at least 20 feet away. If you work in an office and don’t want to look like you’re spacing out, take frequent but brief trips to the water cooler or restroom to give your eyes a break.

Reposition your monitor:  When you stare at your computer monitor, you naturally blink less often. So your eyes don’t get naturally lubricated as often. This leads to eye dryness and redness. To reduce this effect, position your monitor slightly below eye-level. That way, your eyes won’t have to be as open (and exposed) in order for you to see.

The ideal ergonomic position for a monitor is to have your eye level approximately one third of the way from the top edge of the screen, but having it a little lower might help if you frequently feel your eyes tiring.

Relax: Work is important, but you need to be relaxed enough so that tension and stress don’t weigh you down. Take frequent short breaks during the day, and longer breaks one to two times per day so that you can get your mind off work.

At your desk, you can do neck rolls, shoulder shrugs and arm swings to stretch out your neck and shoulders. Rub your temples to release any head tension. Give your eyes periods of darkness for rest by closing your eyes or cupping your palms over your eyes (preferably in a quiet environment).

Lighting is important
Inadequate lighting is another major cause of eye strain. Too much lighting overexposes and irritates the eye. Too little lighting causes the eye to strain in order to see. There are several ways to adjust the lighting in your environment to find what works best for you.

Adjust monitor brightness and contrast settings: Go to your monitor settings and decrease the brightness and contrast until you find the balance that is the easiest on your eyes.

Make sure that your desktop and colour scheme are not agitating your eyes, either. Opt for neutral and darker-coloured tones with minimal contrast until you find the right colour balance.

Additionally, pay attention to the brightness and contrast levels of different web pages and documents. If you have trouble reading a page of gray text on a black background, copy and paste into a new document with dark text on a white background.

 Adjust other lights in the room:  Even if your monitor and desktop settings are set for optimal use, light from your surroundings can irritate your eyes. If the room is too dark, that can affect the overall brightness of the monitor. If the room is too bright, it can create a glare on your monitor.

Avoid glare that goes directly into your eyes. This often occurs when you are facing an uncovered window. Avoid glare that comes from a light source directly behind you. Consider using an anti-glare screen if necessary.

And position desk lights at an angle from behind, as lights that shine directly onto your reading surface (e.g. desk) are  harsher  than light bouncing off the surface at a slight angle. A bias lighting strip can be an easy way to add enough light to see everything on your desk without shining a light directly into your eyes.

Wear sunglasses: When you are not in front of your computer, you can still protect your eyes from incoming light. This helps them endure longer periods in front of the monitor.

Wear sunglasses outdoors or even indoors, if necessary. Make sure that the lenses have the UV protection. If they don’t, they’ll have the opposite effect and just tire out your eyes. (This is because the darker environment created by the tinted lenses will cause your irises to dilate and receive more light.) Polarised lenses (that also have the UV protection) are ideal because they minimise glare.

If you need corrective glasses to see text, your optometrist can make you a pair with an extra layer of the UV protection added.

May 01, 2018