Eye Health

Our Electronic Age:
Supersize an 8-Point Font!

A recent Wall Street Journal article outlined vision challenges of small fonts on electronic handheld devices. According to Dr. James Sheedy, our eyes were not designed to meet the demands of 21st century electronics. The eye's muscles must focus on tiny screens that are often dimmed to save battery life and the letters on computer screens have pixilated edges making them harder to read than smoother-edged printed text. Like any other muscle, eye muscles will fatigue after prolonged use. What can be done?

Will a Small Prescription Help?: The starting point is to determine if a small prescription correction is needed. Twenty years ago, we could tolerate going without a negligible prescription. Now, with so many of us using computers everyday, that same small prescription can cause eye fatigue, eye strain, and headaches. Although an small eyeglass prescription might take care of some vision problems, it may not be enough.

Anti-Reflective Lenses to the Rescue: Computer screens reflect any light around them creating glare which, in turn, reflects off of the front surface of eye glasses. Binoculars, camera lenses, telescopes, and microscopes have the same problem with glare which is why all use an Anti-Reflective (AR) coating to eliminate glare. It is this same coating that we recommend for eye glasses since the problem with glare is the same. Anti-Reflective coatings also reduce halos at night from street and car lights as can be seen in these comparison photos.

Not all Anti-Reflective coatings are the same. At Rosedale Vision Center, we recommend high-quality AR coatings - from companies like Nikon or Zeiss - which use automated equipment in dust-free rooms to apply the coatings. These lenses certainly won't be done in an hour, but they do provide affordable, high-quality lenses in about one to two weeks.

What is Right for You? No solution is universal, but now you know how to start working toward less tired eyes, fatigue, and headaches.