Apple: Accessibility Options to Reduce Eye Strain and Support Vision Disability Sufferers
Apple: Accessibility Options to Reduce Eye Strain and Support Vision Disability Sufferers
Why this petition matters
As LED screen technologies have been introduced into Apple devices, increasing numbers of users are suffering symptoms like eye strain, headaches, migraines, nausea, and other central nervous system manifestations. Users can be found on LEDStrain.org, Reddit, discussions.apple.com, and mac-forums.com who have traced these issues to the following screen and video rendering technologies:
- Blue light emitted from the display
- Pulse width modulation (PWM) for display and backlit keyboard brightness control
- Temporal dithering (used to increase color gambit, for example, to “fake” a 10-bit display on an 8-bit display)
Many users have attempted to contact Apple Support about these issues and have been told that they have eye problems or to see an eye doctor. Often these users subsequently report normal vision in eye exams. Some do report issues with binocular vision, including convergence and divergence insufficiency—although in many cases the degree of insufficiency is not deemed worthy of prism lenses by optometrists. Others suffer from migraine or seizure disorders.
These associations with binocular vision and seizure disorders suggest that there is a legitimate case for users experiencing these issues to be considered to have a disability. Unfortunately, attempts to contact Apple’s Accessibility department have also resulted in no public response. The one exception is blue light, which is the easiest to address. MacOS now includes NightShift, which mimics earlier applications like Flux in reducing the amount of blue light emitted by a screen. Other aspects of Apple displays which cause symptoms remain unaddressed.
The worst part about these issues is that it is impossible to see, by reading device specifications, exactly what display will be in a laptop, whether and how a video card will implement temporal dithering, and other factors.
As consumers with an emergent sensitivity and/or diagnosed medical condition, we request that Apple provide the following:
- Specifications for all products which describe in detail the blue light, PWM, and temporal dithering exposure consumers will experience by using the product.
- Product models with PWM-free displays.
- An option in MacOS settings to select a persistent, high (ie. 120Hz) refresh rate. ProMotion implements higher refresh rates, significantly cutting down on PWM during high screen animation. Unfortunately, those refresh rates drop significantly below 60Hz during low screen animation, making symptoms even worse for many users.
- An option in MacOS settings which disables temporal dithering. (We acknowledge that in order to offer a “billions of colors” display it is necessary to use temporal dithering, but many of us are working professionals who have no choice but to use your devices, and if we do not need fake 10-bit color to perform our work tasks we should be able to choose to turn it off.)
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash
Additional Information
- https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM-is-such-a-headache.270240.0.html
- Amulet Key description of temporal dithering: "Temporal dithering is a technique graphics cards use to generate intermediate colours, by rapidly alternating a pixel between two adjacent colour values. The effect is not perceptible to the human eye. For any compression algorithm, such as that used by PCoIP, this results in a significant overhead when dealing with the increased pixel colour activity." https://silo.tips/download/temporal-dithering-is-enabled-by-default-on-apple-macs-with-no-user-visible-opti
- Many external monitors use temporal dithering internally to "generate intermediate colors." Monitors described as using "8-bit + FRC" are using temporal dithering.
- Amulet Key PDF documents temporal dithering on MacOS: "Temporal dithering is enabled by default on Apple Macs, with no user-visible option to disable it." https://silo.tips/download/temporal-dithering-is-enabled-by-default-on-apple-macs-with-no-user-visible-opti
- SwitchResX developer Stephane Madrau (SwitchResX was a pre-M1 workaround for reverting from "fake" 10-bit color to 8-bit color): "The video driver in the Apple silicon macs doesn't manage resolutions with 8 bit color depths (millions). There's no way to get anything else than 10 bit color depths (billions) on these Macs."
Decision Makers
- Apple Inc.Accessibility