Severe Eyestrain--SUN Workstation problem

[William Caloccia]

[  > I'm looking for help / resources / references for a friend who has
[  > developed severe eyestrain problems from working on a SUN workstation.

[  I think this is a problem that must be addressed, but no one will talk
[  about it, sort of like the emporer's new clothes.  You can add me to the
[  list of people who get severe eyestrain from working on SUN's.  The only
[  thing I've been told that helps is turning off flourescent lights, which
[  is not practical in my office.  Does anyone know how to change the display
[  to white on black?

One question, are you working with monochrome tube which have the
anti-glare coating ('ocli' option).  The coating has been an option on the
monochrome tubes for quite a while. (It comes on colour tubes by default,
and is similar to anti glare coatings on terminals such as the WYSE 50 and
DEC VT220.

>From what (little) I recall of a human factors in design class, a couple
advantages of black on white are:

	studies have shown that people can read black on white faster than
	  they read white on black

	the white background helps to 'cancel' glare and distortion due
	  to other lighting sources reflecting off of the screen.

I've had to do some convincing to get my bosses to pay the extra money for
non-glare screens, but I think that it has paid off.

Of course, they all think I'm a bit strange for putting semi-opaque
diffusers (printer paper) beneath flourescent lights, but....

	--bill (caloccia @ NISC.NYSER.Net)